Not "overall" happy with this chapter but I find it to be presentable and since I'm trying to finish this thing, here ya go. Hope you readers find it acceptable. Start the fic.
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Our heroes had stopped for a temporary rest, Ford taking a breather by sitting on a gravestone.
"Are you okay, Ford?" asked Dipper.
"Yes…Just… Very old, Dipper. My student days are long behind me."
Dipper frowned. He wished he could help Ford, but he didn't know how. How was one supposed to solve old age?
Pacifica saw the gears turning in Dipper's head and whispered something into his ear.
"That goes perfectly with my idea. You're the best Pacifica!"
Dipper ran to Ford with something of a smile on his face.
"Ford, I got an idea to help you! Stay put for a moment!"
Ford grinned. "Of course!" Dipper ran off with Pacifica leaving Ford alone. "Not like I'm going anywhere."
With the Mystery Couple gone, Ford spotted one of the empty graves and frowned.
"Except maybe the grave…"
They were starting to transition into a mucky dungeon again. Another circular entrance but this one had a gate. Ford looked at his reflection in a puddle and thought of Stanley.
"Sigh. I am I prolonging our reunion because I want to live… or am I just too afraid of what you'll have to say when we meet in the afterlife?"
Ford and Stanley had made up to the point where they transversed around the globe together but there were still a few things Ford never got to apologize for.
"Even if I win, who's to say how long I have left anyways? Death comes for us all… was mine just more in person than others? What if this IS supposed to be my time?"
Ford clutched the part of his shirt over his heart.
"Do I have a right to live? What makes me so special to walk away?"
"Ford!" Dipper's voice snapped Ford out of his negative spiral.
"Oh… Dipper. Sorry I was just… What is that?!"
Dipper and Pacifica had wheeled up something that looked like a magical wheelchair.
"It's for you!" beamed Pacifica.
"This is just supposed to make things easier on you. We tricked it out too."
Ford thought hard about the aspects of him being in a wheelchair for a good long minute. Ultimately, he got up and sat in the chair.
"How many turns did making this thing take?"
"Both of ours." explained Pacifica.
"Your turn again."
The back of the chair WAS made of a tombstone. The wheels were made of the branches from the trees but unlike the trees, they looked healthy. The handles were somehow made of metal, and the seat was made of some kind of moss.
"Sigh. A wheelchair. I suppose it was only a matter of time."
Ford slowly got up and walked over to the wheelchair. With a heavy sigh he sat down, his full weight in the chair he felt like his rump activated a switch. He instantly stood up and the thing was… the chair stood up with him! Two shoulder cannons popped up, one looked like it was a hollowed-out tree stump, and the other one was a branch with a large spider web in it. Iron bars that would be used for a cemetery's gate covered his chest. Two more, smaller, tombstones crowned the end of Ford's hand controls promising devastating punches. The wheels had moved to the bottom of his feet and started to spin so fast that they created a gust to lift him off the ground.
"What is this?!"
Ford was shouting this of course but there was also a certain joy in his surprise that Dipper relished in.
"You said your old age was what was slowing you down, not your desire to play. So, we sacrificed some turns to make this for you!" explained Dipper.
"But how?" asked Ford. "It's so elaborate! How could you two make this in just a couple of turns?!"
"Making up our own rules, we could have our dice rolls be as diversed and detailed as we wanted." explained Pacifica.
"It was Pacifica's idea to turn it into an Iron Man suit thing! She's so smart." added Dipper.
Pacifica delivered two small pecks to Dipper's lips.
"What a thoughtful gift this is! I love it! Ha ha! Follow me!"
He flew to the circular gate with laughter in his heart. Pacifica, meanwhile, grimaced.
"Ew! This place looks grosser than the sewer part! Everything is so Grimy!"
Dipper gently held Pacifica closer to her neck.
"Don't worry, Baby. I'll protect you."
No kisses this time, instead Pacifica hugged Dipper's entire cheek.
They walked through the entrance only for the iron portcullis gate to fall down from behind them.
*SLAM!*
"Okay, this might be a little different from the last one." admitted Dipper.
"Dipper!" called Ford. "You MUST come see this!"
Joining Ford, they found more glowing symbols. "Great! What does this batch mean?"
"Well Pacifica, the good news is that they say we can summon creatures again."
"What's the bad news?" asked Dipper.
"He stepped up the challenge."
As soon as Ford made this revelation, the entire wall behind him glowed with different symbols.
"Each one is a hieroglyphic from a different country. Together they spell out a message."
"What is it?" asked Pacifica.
"Don't know. Looks like it could take a while, but it looks like it's going to be one big run off sentence."
Dipper was about to ask another question when Pacifica slithered up his neck, making him shudder, and rested on top of his head.
"Paz? What is it, Baby?"
"I hear something."
She was staring intently at the roof, since snakes could hear through the ground and whole room was made of stone, when one part moved Pacifica could hear it moving the other stone parts. And right now, she could hear something moving above them.
*KA-CHUNK!*
Pacifica nearly fell off Dipper's head as she saw the roof move.
"AAGH! DIPPER, THE ROOF IS CLOSING IN!"
"WHAT?!"
There was no doubt. The entire ceiling was lowering itself.
"Uh Great Uncle Ford? Might want to put a haste on that translation!"
"I'm trying! I'm translating as fast as I can!"
*PATCHOO!*
Dipper jumped back as one of the square stone blocks from the wall shot across in front of him. More blocks from both sides of the wall started shooting out in a random attack of chaos.
"Foooord?" The tense panic in Dipper's voice clearly indicated that he wanted Ford to hurry.
"I'm translating! I'm translating!"
The roof continued to close in on them and the walls from the sides was shooting itself at them. Something had to be done.
Dipper got out the vine whip. "Okay this one is a little experimental but just roll with me on this one."
His vine whip latched onto one stone which he thing hurled to smash against another. He placed himself in front of Ford so the scholar could translate in peace. Dipper was making good use of his whip, smashing one block into another. He did this two more times, but with the roof closing in, it was starting to look like a futile effort.
He needed to come up with something better.
"Hmm…"
"Dipper?" asked Pacifica. "What are you thinking?"
A lot was happening at the moment and Dipper stopping to think of solutions wasn't making Pacifica feel any better.
"A risky idea. It could work… I'm just sure we have the time for it what with the ceiling and all."
Pacifica grabbed him by the collar and shook him a little bit.
"Well don't waste time debating it!"
His whip caught another block but this time he also stabbed it with one of his green arrows. A glob of goop appeared where he stabbed, and the arrow was gone. He hurled the whip, and he hit one of the oncoming rocks with the whip colliding with the block that just got gooped.
Ford rolled some of his dice. "I cast haste! To translate faster!"
His dice landed on a four, it wasn't very high, so it only helped a little bit.
"My turn!" panic clearly in Pacifica's voice. "I roll to strengthen Dipper, so his CRAZY PLAN CAN WORK!"
Her dice landed on a solid thirty and Dipper gained a mass of muscles for his entire body in a glowing flash.
Pacifica let out a yelp of surprise as she was accidentally thrown out of Dipper's clothes. Her landing wasn't exactly rough, so she was able to get up pretty quickly. Dipper's new bulging body earned him a slack jawed stare from his girlfriend. Her eyes became enlarged with hearts in them and a little bit of drool escaped from her mouth.
A quick slap to her own face reminded her of the situation. Coiling herself up, she sprung herself back into Dipper's clothes.
Dipper writhed in place for a moment as he felt something squirming around his body. He was feeling a lot of wriggling around his stomach, and he could stand whatever it was that giving him such full-bodied goosebumps. He reached in and pulled it out only to find his girlfriend staring back at him.
"Pacifica?!"
The gorgon blushed in embarrassment.
"Eh heh heh. Sorry about that." Her blush deepened. "I guess I got a little carried away. I'll, like, control myself better from this point on. I swear!"
Dipper silently stared out into space for a moment.
"… talk later!"
He tucked Pacifica under his collar and went back to his strategy of gooping the projectile blocks together. Dipper repeated his process until he had created what looked like a cubed ball version of a giant mace. With one final swing, Dipper wedged the cube ball against the wall stopping the pressing ceiling. The ceiling groaned in protest, but the tactic was proving to be working.
It was good timing too; the ceiling was only a couple of feet away from their heads.
"Got it! All we need to do is…" Ford stood up and walked over to the middle of the room. He pulled open a stone tile on the floor where he found a handle on the inside. He gave it a firm yank upwards and the door behind them opened up.
Dipper flashed yellow for a moment and in a burst of light changed back to normal.
"Aw nuts!" Pacifica snapped her fingers. "Oh well, easy come easy go. I like default physique Dipper just fine anyways."
She hugged his cheek and rubbed her face against it.
"That's sweet, Babe. Try to focus though, home stretch!"
They entered the next room to find giant numbers decorating the upper parts of the wall. The numbers ranged from one to thirty-eight, the higher the number the closer it would get to the roof. Outside of that it looked like an ordinary dungeon room. At first nothing happened, a moment passed and then another. Pacifica was about to ask a question when something fell from the roof.
At first glance it was some round black object. Then an arm shout of one end, then another on the other end. A tail unfurled from the top and rested on the floor. A skull lifted itself up from the bottom and stared into each of their souls.
This was it. The mini-boss of the dungeon before they would fight the Grim Reaper himself.
Norlog the Number Devourer. He crawled on his belly using his two hands, the horns on his head took the shape of the number 3 and 4, the bumps on his back ranged from one to seven. Giant fangs adorned his unnaturally large mouth. He had no hind legs, but his tail was long and strong.
"Mini-boss time! We got this!" declared Dipper.
"His number is up!" agreed Ford.
"I'll bedazzle him with bite marks!"
Norlog opened his mouth and started to inhale on a massively unnatural level. All three of the adventurers had their dice fly off of them and landed on the ground in front of Norlog. They spun rapidly on their corners until they each glowed with a different color. Dipper's was green, Ford's was blue, and Pacifica's was hot pink. They were each exhibiting a vapor of some kind that Norlog greedily inhaled.
The dice stopped spinning, the colors were gone, and the vapor was consumed in its entirety. The most frightening thing though was the dice, they were now completely blank.
"Hey! Now that's, like, totally unfair! How can we play if we can't roll our dice?!"
"It's okay, Pacifica!" reassured Dipper. "It looks like we'll just have to use our physical attacks!"
"Good thing you two made me this suit then! I'll lead us off!"
Ford charged in and fired from his tree stump shoulder cannon. Norlog roared in pain as a pink magic laser hit him in the face. Slightly burned in the face, Norlog tried to scamper away to a wall but quickly found his movement impeded. Ford had used his other shoulder cannon, the branch, to fire a spider web to stick Norlog's tail to the floor. Flying in close, Ford used his new gravestone-weighted fists to deliver a punishing double whammy to Norlog's back. While the monster roared in pain, Dipper came in on the right and grabbed one of his horns. This was just to keep the monster in place as Pacifica slithered out from Dipper's sleeve and bit Norlog with both her own fangs and the fangs of her serpent heads.
Norlog spasmed on the ground in pain, his flailing body knocking each of the heroes off of him. His writhing was enough to break the spider web, and he quickly made his way to the closest wall.
"I've had shoes tougher than him!" boasted Pacifica. "Look! My venom is already turning his face purple! He's dropping HP by the second!"
Ford felt like his outlook had completely turned around. The game was almost over, they were winning against the second to last boss, and he was having fun! He was having fun while fighting for his eternal soul! Was this even allowed?!
Ford could have scientifically analyzed his perception change into a thesis, but he knew the real reason why he was feeling up now. Dipper. Dipper and his little girlfriend. The fact that they cared and were willing to help him with his obstacles just warmed his heart.
And the fact that Dipper was family somehow made it even better. It looked like Stanley had this 'family' thing pegged from the start.
He couldn't help but smile. Life is always worth living so long as you have people that love you.
Dipper was the only one of them that wasn't smiling about all this. He loaded his crossbow with one of his few remaining green arrows.
"I don't like him being up there! I think he's up to something!"
He fired but Norlog quickly dodged out of the way. He was much faster on the wall than the floor. He stopped his scurrying when he was on top of a number.
He opened his mouth and let out a Hellish "SIIIIIIIIIX!"
He glowed yellow for a moment and then ran in place for a moment with his hands before taking off like a shot.
"Hey!" Ford exclaimed as they watched the monster run around the room. "That's the same haste spell I casted on myself!"
"But you didn't roll a six for that! It was a four!" objected Pacifica. "So, what's his plan supposed to be? Like, just run through the spells we already casted?"
Dipper tried to shoot him again, but it was even harder now. Norlog stopped on a one which was suspiciously closer to the ground than the other numbers. He stared directly at them before opening his mouth and declaring "OOOOONE!"
"...Did we ever roll a one?" asked Dipper.
"I don't think so..." pondered Ford.
"Not that I can recall." answered Pacifica.
The room became shrouded in darkness and in their moment of confusion Norlog hit them all with his tail.
The trio grunted as they hit the ground hard. Picking themselves up, Ford and Dipper stood back-to-back. Dipper took out one of his red arrows and struck it against the ground like a match. The arrowhead was now ablaze, and Dipper held it up like a torch.
"Okay," Ford began. "He's clearly playing his own game with us. We just need to figure out the rules so we can take him down!"
"How are we supposed to do that when we can't create any new spells or weapons?! I already tried shooting him, he's too fast!"
"Wait!" Pacifica pointed at the number one symbol that Norlog was just on. "Look at the number! It's all faded and junk! I think he only gets one of each number!"
"Okay, important note but still short of a strategy here!" insisted Dipper.
The darkness started to fade, most likely due to the low number, and Norlog could be seen stopping on another number.
"TEEEEEEN!"
Norlog instantly grew in muscles and scampered around the walls at a much easier pace.
"Hey, bigger target now... Right?" Pacifica uncomfortably laughed.
"I'll try to slow him down!" shouted Ford.
The scientist Pines fired multiple spider webs around the room. No matter how quickly he shot though, he could never quite hit Norlog.
Norlog was almost off of the number seven when he suddenly stopped. He looked down at his hand to see that it was stuck in one of Ford's Spider webs.
"NOW'S YOUR CHANCE, DIPPER! SHOOT HIM!" shouted Ford.
Dipper shot his red arrow and hit Norlog between the eyes. Norlog's head became enflamed and howled in pain.
The celebration was short lived, however. Norlog braced himself into stillness and dug his hands into the number. Even as the fire started to spread to the rest of his body he just growled through the pain.
"SEVEEEEEEEEEEEEN!"
The flames became purple and Norlog launched himself off of the wall. Ford recognized the tactic immediately. "He turned himself into a living magic missile! EVERYBODY GET DOWN!"
Unfortunately, Ford's warning wasn't quick enough, and the trio was knocked over in a purple fireball of pain. Norlog landed on the opposite wall and his flames extinguished.
Dipper and the others rose painfully, taking a moment to put out any purple flames on their bodies.
"Broken bones, poisoned, burnt... How much health does this freak have?!" asked Pacifica. "What's it going to take to bring this loser down?!"
"JUST KEEP HITTING HIM!" shouted Ford as he fired from his tree stump shoulder cannon.
Norlog jumped to the side, dodging the beam; it let out a roar of defiance before scurrying off to another number.
Its speed was significantly reduced thanks to all of the spider webs, but it didn't move far.
"FOOOUUUR!"
Norlog glowed for a brief moment but other than that he looked unchanged. He opened his mouth, and a snake shot out of his mouth towards Dipper.
A quick on his sleeve was the only reason Dipper was able to dodge the flying bite in time. Dipper was ready to kick the serpent as soon as it hit the floor, but it never dropped.
The snake was instead back with Norlog, sticking out of his mouth as if it were his...
"Tongue?!" Dipper gasped. "He transformed his tongue into a snake?!"
"Sea snake." Pacifica corrected. "I saw with both my own eyes and the eyes of my snakes when it lunged at you that the thing was a sea snake! It was from when I rolled to change what kind of snake I was! He's playing his own game but he's still taking pages from OUR playbooks!"
"And yet I wonder..." Ford pondered for a moment. "I think I might have a plan! Forget about trying to hit him! Right now, just try to make sure he doesn't get too comfortable on any of the lower numbers!"
"Why?" asked Pacifica.
"I don't know. I know him better than anyone and even I can't keep up with his way of thinking sometimes!" confessed Dipper.
He had to admit though, there was some sense to Ford's plan. The single digit numbers were all closer to the floor and by extension them, so ergo they were easier to protect. So, they did what they could to make sure Norlog didn't stay on a single digit number for too long.
Dipper would shoot ice arrows to make icicle spikes sprout up to protect the number, Ford had his tree stump shoulder cannon ready at a moment's notice, but Pacifica... Pacifica was still small and with no dice to use that meant she had no means of a projectile attack.
So, Dipper and Ford tried their best to pick up her slack for her. At the rate they were going though, it was starting to turn into a war of nutrition.
Norlog finally settled for landing on a higher number, one that was near the top.
"THIIIIIIIIIIRTY!"
Norlog glowed for a brief moment and his head changed to have a closer resemblance to a Komodo dragon.
"Okay, now I think I'm starting to see your strategy..." Dipper nodded his head in understanding.
Norlog leapt off of his number with his mouth opened wide in an attempt to take a flying bite out of Ford. He dodged out of the way, unharmed, but it was at the cost of his tree branch shoulder cannon.
Norlog didn't waste any time climbing back up the wall to get at another number. One of Dipper's ice spikes managed to cut him on the way up, but the monster didn't let that slow him down.
Pacifica, on the other hand, had slithered her way out of Dipper's clothes; she had a plan of her own.
She worked her way over to Ford's fallen branch and picked it up with both hands. "I wonder if this will work..."
She aimed it like a giant cannon and shot out a spider web. She smirked and took a better grip on it using both arms.
Ford and Dipper were still giving it their all, but they had time to notice Pacifica's tactic as well as time to share an opinion on it.
"Your little girlfriend actually thinks pretty quickly!" Ford noticed.
"Yeah..." Dipper smiled lovingly. "She's the best!"
"SEVENTEEEEEEEEN!"
The situation at hand had immediately reinstated itself, bringing Dipper out of his thoughts.
Crocodile-like scales covered Norlog's body in the same glow as before.
"Okay! Now we need to reverse our strategy!" Ford ordered. "We keep him close to the single digit numbers! See if you can get him to land on a two!"
In a trio of wordless battle cries, the three of them shot wildly at Norlog trying to get him onto a lower number.
It was a blind tactic that was more about desperation to get Norlog off the high numbers then it was about hurting him but it seemed to be working.
Norlog was now desperately dodging blasts from all three of his opponents. Ford's Spider webs from earlier and Dipper's ice spikes were still hanging around, so he didn't have as much maneuverability as when he started.
Ford got in a lucky hit and Norlog fell off of his wall, through one of Dipper's ice spikes, and onto the floor. His new scales had taken the blunt of the impact, so he was able to jump back onto his hands pretty quickly.
He shot out his sea serpent tongue again, this time aiming for Dipper's ankle. Pacifica was ready to intercept though as she tackled the tongue from underneath. She, along with all the snakes in her hair, bit into the sea serpent's body.
Pacifica was thrown off easily enough, but she had done her dirty deed for the group. Even more of her venom was in Norlog's body now, crocodile scales be damned.
Norlog was moving at a much slower pace now. He was still able to climb up the wall, but it didn't look like he was interested in being too picky about what numbers to use.
So, he used the closest one.
"TWOOOOoooo..."
Norlog's body glowed the same color as the last times but then fell off for some reason. Upon closer inspection, it all made sense.
Norlog's hands were now T-Rex claws. Too small and tiny to hold a grip on an even wall, he fell to the ground and stopped moving. He twitched a little bit, so he wasn't quite dead yet. Ford flew in and delivered a gravestone-weighted punch to the part of Norlog's face that Pacifica had bitten. The skull easily yielded to the heavy punch, the rest of skull caving in soon after. He took a moment to shake off the blood from his gravestone-weighted fists and the far wall started to move upwards to reveal the way forward.
"How did you know that this would happen to him?" asked Pacifica.
Ford adjusted his glasses. "It was a hypothesis really. Like you said, he was taking pages from our playbooks to play his own game, but when it came to rolls that changed his body it was obvious that how drastically the change was depended on how high a number he rested on. He got a four and only his tongue changed. It was also unlikely that he would summon any creatures to help him since he obviously wanted all three of us for himself. The only possible solution for our mixed mashed creation earlier would have to be more body changes. The T-Rex addition was last in the pot so logic would dictate that it would be the last change."
Pacifica nodded in understanding; it felt like she was attending a college class lecture, but she was following along fine.
"I figured if the rest of his body would get large changes to his body so long as the number was a big one. So, a small number would only give him a small change, and one of the smallest parts of the T-Rex is the arms."
Pacifica looked at Dipper with an impressed expression. "He really IS a genius!"
Dipper puffed out his chest in pride. "He always has been."
Different colors from each of our heroes started to glow and they each took out their dice. In a bright flash all of the numbers had reappeared on the dice.
"Oh, thank goodness!" Pacifica exclaimed with a breath of relief.
Dipper wasted no time in taking a roll. "I cast heal to patch us up for our final fight."
The dice landed on a seventeen and the group felt their injuries start to disappear.
"My turn!" Pacifica declared. "I, like, roll to grow myself back to normal size!"
She didn't even look at the number she landed on because she knew that Dipper was going to want an explanation either way.
Now able to look her lover eye to eye she couldn't help but smile at his confused expression.
"I liked snuggling you and all, but you and Ford have clearly worked out your issues now. Besides, I wasn't of much use in the last fight at that size."
"Nonsense!" Dipper scoffed. "You held your own just fine!"
"But not as much as I would have liked to!" argued Pacifica. "I was pocket sized, and he was a big honking monster! I'm lucky I did as much damage as I did! This size for the remaining stretch."
"Yeah..." Dipper turned to the removed wall. The way forward was completely dark. Not a thing could be seen, they were going forward practically blind. "Only one real challenge for us to face now..."
"The dungeon master himself. The Grim Reaper." finished Ford.
"Well let's get this over with then! Having scales is, like, even worse than dry skin! I keep feeling like I have to moisturize! Dipper? Maybe another one of those fire arrows can light our way?"
"Right behind you, Sweetheart!"
Ford smiled as he watched the next generation take the lead.
He thought back to his earlier contemplations, about what could give him a reason to live... He had an answer now.
'They do.' thought Ford. 'They are what makes me special enough to walk away. If they're willing to go through such lengths for an old fossil like me then maybe I still have a thing or two left to offer this world.'
That's it for now. Yeah, Pacifica got just a smidgen naughty in the chapter and for the readers who didn't like that I apologize. Anyways, I am pouring the affection in so I want to hear if any of you are enjoying it!