This one is entirely Gravity Falls after feedback suggested that they were overwhelming the last comp.
Gravity Falls: Friendship is Magic: 16: Behold, party.
It was the dead of night. Technically it was morning, if 2 AM could be considered morning.
Stan was sneaking down the stairs. He had stuck super-powerful sleep agents into the sextuplets’ food yesterday, but they were Loopers. He had no idea is they were immune, resistant, or just didn’t need sleep at all. So he had to be quiet.
He stood before the vending machine, perfectly still for a few moments.
“Here we go again…” He whispered to himself, typing in the secret code into the machine. The snack-dispenser folded out of the wall, revealing the stairwell into the basement. He closed it behind him.
He descended the stairs, walking into the elevator, and going to the basement marked “3.”
The Lab.
He had seen this place so many times. He had gotten used to the weird poindexter stuff hundreds of thousands of times. He knew what all of it was, and how all of it worked. He could get anything here working in a matter of minutes.
He was going to do it the old fashioned way this time.
He took Journal 1 out of the desk, taking Journals 2 and 3 out of his subspace Pocket. He couldn’t risk trying to take them from the mane six. They were too observant.
He would just have to do it at the right time.
He opened the Journals to the pages that, when combined, depicted what was by far the largest deceive in the lab. A triangular portal with a single circle in it.
He pressed a few buttons, using the Journals as a guide. He wondered why he bothered looking at them, he had it memorized at this point. Press this button, throw this lever, blah de blah…
The portal activated, the circle in the center shining a spotlight on him.
“Aaaand it’s working again.” He looked down, growling. Where had his pants gone? Why did they always inexplicably disappear when he turned on the portal? It was really really annoying.
He took some pants out of his Pocket, putting them on and grinning. He took a heroic pose. “And now… we wait until the fourth of july. Time to get back to normal stuff…”
He walked out of the lab, and went to bed.
Far away, some secret government agents detected some energy readings, just like they always did.
However, something different did occur…
Celestia woke up with a start, breathing heavily. “It’s happening again.”
Luna made a “mhm” noise.
“We must go and investigate at once!”
“Mhm.”
“Luna!”
“Mhm.”
“What are you- oh.” Celestia facepalmed, realizing that her sister was glued to the television screen. Something was exploding.
“LUNA!!!”
“Just one more minute-“
“IT’S TWO AM!”
“But-“
Celestia raised a hand, blasting the screen with a sunbeam. Luna’s jaw dropped. “BUT I WAS SO CLOSE TO A HIGH SCORE!”
“Luna. I sensed the Disturbance again. I haven’t felt it in thirty years. Something is happening. Something big.”
“You said that when your birthday cake went missing.”
“I mean it this time Luna. We have to go out and… and…”
Luna rolled her eyes, standing up. “Well, I’m going out to get a TV. Call me if you think of anything we can actually do. We didn’t know what was causing the Disturbance back then, and we have no idea what’s causing it now.”
“Maybe it’s those kids…”
“You’re already watching those kids.”
“But…”
Luna left the room, leaving Celestia to pout. There had to be something she could do…
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
The next morning, three girls were examining Journal 2…
And Lyra was freaking out. She held up Journal 2 to the page with Bill. “There is a wheel of symbols around him! Why is no-one else freaked out by this?”
“Seen it all before.” Rainbow Dash responded, really wanting to look at a different page.
Twilight shrugged. “It actually hasn’t been exactly like this before. Haven’t had an ancient wheel of symbols in a while.”
“BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN???” Lyra exclaimed, waving the book around. “I mean look! This symbol is the same one I put on my journal! There’s one that matches the design on Rainbow’s clothing! There’s a grappling hook! There’s a taco.”
Rainbow Dash sighed. “This could just be one of his tricks, you know-“
“But I’ve seen these symbols everywhere! Stan’s fez. The heart on Robbie’s sweater. The six fingered hand on the journals! WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN???”
“There there..” Twilight said, patting Lyra on the back, trying to keep the girl from hyperventilating. “We’ll probably figure it out eventually. How about we just worry about Pinkie’s karaoke party right now?”
“Why would we need to worry?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Because. She’s scheduled a performance in the Pinkie Emporium at the same time.”
Rainbow Dash blinked. “She cloning herself again?”
“She says she’s going to try to do it with just items found in-Loop. She assured me it wasn’t going to be the copier.”
Rainbow Dash blinked. “How is she…”
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
“Here’s your butterflies.” Pinkie told the gnome, handing him the jar.
“Heheh. Thanks there little pony. Didn’t know your kind still existed in these parts.” The shady gnome responded, taking his jar of butterflies.
“We’re still around. I disguise myself as a human more often than not. Now I held up my end of the deal, so where is it?”
The Gnome produced a ring apparently made of diamonds. “Here’s your thingawhatsis. Got it from the Wreckage. Don’t tell anyone I was here.”
“Okie dokie lokie!” Pinkie said, grabbing the ring with her mane. She slipped it onto her hoof. “Now… time to party!”
And she was gone.
The gnome took out the butterflies, stuffing them into his beard. He giggled. “Butterflies….”
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
Later that night, the karaoke party was in full swing.
“You enjoying the party?” Pinkie asked, saddling up to Luna.
“I am.” Luna said, drinking the punch. (She had realized it was spiked about an hour ago. She didn’t care.) “Though my sister is making it most annoying…”
Pinkie turned her head to the tree Celestia was hiding in. “Yeah it is a little awkward when they’re trying to be sneaky but you know they’re there…” Pinkie shrugged. “Gotta go!” She leapt behind a box, adjusting the ring around her wrist. She was suddenly in the Pinkie Emporium, grinning. “Welcome to the show! Now look at this gigantic bugbear and be astounded!” The audience cheered. Pinkie juggled bugbears for a few minutes, before diving under the stage and returning to the Shack, this time to launch some party cannons just as Rarity wrapped up her song.
Then she leapt back to Roswell to turn into a pony right before everyone’s eyes and do a little jig involving chimicherrychangas.
This was her continual existence for the night. A nice challenge. Of course if things just started going wrong she could start cloning herself or using teleportation or any number of other things. But she was going to see how long she could keep this up…
While Pinkie was at the Emporium, a covert car pulled up to the shack. Out stepped two official looking government types.
The reactions were varied. Many people carried on as if nothing was happening. Luna made herself scarce, but watched in interest.
Rainbow Dash groaned. “Great. Agents… Always fun”
Twilight sighed. “I suppose we better go talk to them… hello misters, what brings you here?”
“I’m Agent Powers.” A tall, older man said, flashing his ID. “This is Agent Trigger, my associate. We are here to investigate something of the utmost importance. We must ask, have you seen anything unusual around here?”
While Twilight was attempting to discern if these were Mulder and Scully type agents or the bad government type, Lyra was having a completely different reaction.
She stormed into the Mystery Shack. “STAN! THERE ARE GOVERNMENT AGENTS HERE!” She grabbed her hair. “We’ve got to burn all the evidence!”
Stan blinked. “You know I’m supposed to be the one that freaks out at this point, right?”
Lyra grabbed him. “We. Have. To. Hide. All. The. Magic. Stuff.”
Stan nodded. “Of course… Speed cleaning! SOOS!”
“Yes Mister Pines?” The large man responded.
“Put up the fake wall, take out all the old attractions, and try to sell some government agents some overpriced shirts!”
“On it!”
“Lyra, you’re with me. You’re the cataloguer-“
“Actually that’s Bon Bon. She’s got everything organized.”
“Whatever. She’s not here right now. You’re the next best thing. Find all the stuff and throw it down a trap door. And we just cross our fingers and hope Pinkie doesn’t-”
The sound of Pinkie’s trademark “NEW PERSON!” gasp was heard.
“-Do that.” Stan said, rubbing his forehead. “We’re doomed.”
Lyra shrugged. “It gives us more chance to hide stuff. HURRY UP.”
Outside, Pinkie was greeting the agents. “Hi! I’m Pinkie Pie! You may know me as the creator of the Pinkie Emporium!” She bowed, still in her pony-performer state. “You must forgive my form, the tricks are a bit hard to deal with over hundreds of miles.” She grinned sheepishly.
Rainbow Dash and Twilight simply stared at her, slack jawed.
Trigger began to snicker. Powers turned to him. “What is that sound you are making?”
“It’s a laugh.” Trigger responded. “You should learn it sometime.”
“Ha. Ha. Ha. I fail to see the merit in this sound.”
Trigger face palmed. Powers turned to the girls. “Girls, you must tell us, have you seen anything weird around here?”
Twilight cast the silence spell on Pinkie, hoping the pink mare would get the hint to not say anything. “Not really, unless you could this karaoke party here. It’s really weird.”
The human form of Bulk Biceps and Manly Dan were having a “YEAAAAAH” contest on stage.
Powers blinked. “How is that weird?”
Trigger face palmed. “Sometimes I wonder why you’re in charge of this division.”
“I was told it was because I was not easily fazed.”
Trigger sighed. “You, girls, no weird stuff?” The girls shook their heads. “Good. We shall be off.”
Powers nodded, handing them the card. “Spread these around, anyone can call us if they saw weird things this way. Now we must speak with the owner of this establishment.”
“Establishment.” Trigger emphasized.
Twilight tensed. Great. The inside of the Shack was undoubtedly filled with magical artifacts and things that would draw a lot of unwanted attention, and it was always annoying to deal with government types. She tried to think of a way out of this-
Soos walked up to the Agents. “Hey doods want to buy some shirts?”
“Why on earth would I want a cougar shirt?” Powers asked.
Trigger shrugged. “I think it looks cool, but I think it’s a mountain lion.”
“PUMA!” Someone in the crowd yelled.
“PANTHER!” Tyler yelled in response.
“TABBY CAT!” McGucket yelled. Everyone fell silent. McGucket groaned, walking off in a huff.
Powers shook his head. “We do not need to waste our time with pointless paraphernalia.”
Stan poked his head out of the Shack. “Why on earth wouldn’t you want to buy my shirts? Come on you two, come in, come in, a Shack of Mystery awaits…
Five minutes later the Agents had bought two-hundred bucks worth of useless junk, and and decided that there was nothing worthwhile in the Shack.
Stan and Lyra bumped fists. A job well done.
“Now we just have to find Bon Bon…” Stan said, looking over the crowd. “We need to recatalogue everything we just shoved into Pinkie’s mane…”
Meanwhile, in Roswell, Pinkie reached into her mane to find a rubber chicken.
She found a skull of lost secrets instead. That had a bombchu in it.
“Uh oh.” Pinkie said. She quickly tossed the object behind her, where it instantly exploded. It reacted with the eldritch walls, creating a strange fractal pattern which instantly turned everyone’s head into cupcakes.
Pinkie sighed, waving her wand and changing everyone back. “Sorry about that folks, looks like I misplaced my rubber chicken!”
Everyone laughed at that. Well, those who weren’t suffering a cupcake-related existential crisis.
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
“I wonder if we actually detected anything last night…”
Powers shrugged. “The techies can debate it when we get back.”
“Back” Trigger emphasized.
“Actually, you two won’t have to go anywhere.”
The two agents whirled around, guns drawn. Before them was a really short person, dressed all in black. Her pink and blue curled hair at her sides. She lifted her sunglasses. “You’ve been lied to.”
“And just who are you?” Powers asked.
“Who?” Trigger emphasized.
“The name is Drops. Sweetie Drops. And there is much more going on than you’re privy to…”
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
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Gravity Falls: Friendship is Magic 17: Lyra alone.
“Hey Rainbow Dash, I found out that there may be a hidden bunker beneath a tree in the woods, want to check it out?”
Lyra was greeted only with the sound of the harpie sleeping on a cloud.
Lyra rolled her eyes. “Hey Twilight, want to go exploring?”
“Can’t right now Lyra.” Twilight said, levitating Journals 2 and 3 in front of her, opened on the pages that seemed to connect. In front of the journals were many technologically advanced components, presumably from her Pocket. “I’m trying to figure out what this is…”
Lyra rolled her eyes. “You realize we’ll need Journal 1 to complete that right?”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t experiment.” Twilight said, moving the pieces around. “Maybe it needs to be bigger…”
Lyra shrugged, walking down the stairs. “Hey Pinkie, want to-“
“Sorry can’t! I accidentally opened up a portal to the Warp in the Emporium and I have to clean it up! Want to join me?”
Lyra blinked. “Uh… no.”
“Okie! Good luck on that bunker!”
“How did you- never mind.” Lyra decided to try Applejack next. “Hey Applejack, how about some adventuring?”
“Ahm sorry Lyra, I promised Luna I’d help her distract Celestia for a while. Poor girl needs some relax time.”
Lyra nodded, furrowing her brow. Well she might as well ask Rarity.
“Stan! Darling! Do you happen to know how long your bathtub allows me to soak?”
“Uh…” The old man said, scratching his head. “I really don’t know. Nobody’s asked that before. Feel free to experiment with it as long as you want.”
“GREAT!” Rarity said, rushing into the bathroom and locking herself in. Lyra sighed. Who else could there possibly be…
Minutes later, Lyra couldn’t believe she was doing what she was doing.
“Hey, Fluttershy?”
“Oh, um. Hi. What brings you here?”
“I was looking for someone to go adventuring with.”
“Oh I’m sorry…” Fluttershy said, frowning. “I’ve got to help the Gnomes rebuild their house since the dragon burnt it down.”
Lyra drooped. “Okay… I get it…” She walked away, entering the Mystery Shack. She knew Soos wasn’t even in the Shack today. The only other person she could think of right now-
“HEY BON BON! I know adventuring isn’t your thing, but think of what we could uncover in a mysterious bunker!”
Bon Bon gave Lyra the “really?” look.
“Oh come on! Fun! High adventure! Mysteries!”
Bon Bon raised her eyebrow.
“You never know, it might be fun.”
Bon Bon frowned.
“You’re going to convince me to stop this line of conversation without even saying a word aren’t you.”
Bon Bon nodded.
Lyra groaned, leaving the Shack. Then she frowned. Why did she need anyone anyway? She explored all on her own all the time before she’d met everyone! She’d solve the mystery on her own!
She took the page she’d magically photocopied form the Journal, instructing her in how to access the bunker.
It was time to go Into the Bunker.
[br]
The place was amazing. So many traps, mysteries, posters, and items fit to prepare a small group for any kind of apocalypse, be it nuclear, cosmological, or even the destruction of the planet. She noted with some respect that the entire place was filled with vacuum sealed locks.
The Author must’ve been preparing for something big to happen thirty years ago. Something big and bad. Did he stop it from happening? After all, the world didn’t appear to be recovering from any kind of apocalypse.
She popped a mini sweetroll into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. This was most interesting…
She found a door that led outside the bunker and into a large cavern, supposedly where the Author would keep experiments too large to keep in the sealed building. She ventured out, curious. She walked up to a glass cylinder that was cracked and broken. Whatever’d been in there was long gone.
Or it was still in here, waiting to slurk up her brains.
Lyra quickly took out her own journal, flipping to the pages that had quick and easy-to-use spells on it. She looked around cautiously.
Then she heard something roar. Something big. She whirled around, seeing a shadow of some kind of strange, tentacled monster. A really, really big tentacled monster.
She shouted out the words for a fire spell, launching a jet of flame before turning tail and running.
With annoyance she realized she didn’t have time to open the vacuum sealed doors. She ran deeper into the cave.
She could hear it chasing her. Making strange slimy noises. She grunted, leaping over rock after rock, stalagmite after stalagmite. Or was it stalactite? That thought caused her to lose focus and run right into a stalactite. She fell to the ground dazed. In her daze, she saw the shadow of the creature rearing up, ready to move in. Then the shape of a man attacked the creature, tearing out it’s tongue. The creature roared in frustration, and Lyra heard it scuttle away.
The man walked up to her. “Well, that was a little bit of a change to the routine. There usually isn’t anyone to protect from the beast.” He smiled, his strange mustache quivering. “Welcome to my bunker.”
Lyra’s eyes widened. “You.. You… YOU’RE THE AUTHOR OF THE JOURNALS???”
“Why yes my girl. Been stuck down here for a while though. The creature is most savage.”
Lyra stared at him. “I have a couple billion questions to ask you, can you answer them all in sequence and as detailed as possible?”
“Not right now. The creature is on the prowl. I don’t really have a way to stop it, I lost most of my research along with my Journals…”
Lyra frowned. “I don’t have Journals 2 or 3 with me right now, and we have no idea where 1 is but…” Her eyes lit up, showing her journal. “I keep my personal notes in here! It’s got spells and all sorts of stuff.”
The Author’s eyes widened. “Most intriguing!” He grabbed the journal, beginning to flip through it. He smiled. “Ah yes, I can use this. Come, I can get us out of here now. All we have to do is lay down this ice spell. The creature hates the cold.”
Lyra nodded, following him. This was so exciting! Finally the man with all the answers! At long last!
…all they had to do was get out of here without being eaten.
Great…
“So, question… why did you make this place?”
“An enemy of mine was plotting to end the world. Obviously that didn’t happen since you’re here, but it was nothing more than a precaution anyway… Hey look! I found a tongue!”
Lyra found herself rather fascinated with how the Author licked the tongue to test it. “It seems… salty. Cook it to medium rare and there’ll be a good meal.” He tossed it to Lyra, who grabbed it, grinning. She was holding the next meal! So awesome!
It did not occur to Lyra that something was off. Fresh meat just randomly around a completely sealed off cave with no signs of life aside from her, the Author, and the creature? Completely normal. And who cared anyway she was with the Author! So cool!
Then there was the sound of a door opening.
“Huh… I wonder who that could be…”
“Possibly one of my friends. They do know I’m down here.” Lyra offered.
“We must get to them before the creature!” And the Author took off into the caves, bounding forward almost like a dog.
Lyra blinked, then shrugged. Then she realized something.
“HEY CAN I HAVE MY JOURNAL BACK?”
Evidentially the Author didn’t hear her. Lyra sighed, running after him.
They soon came to the door, which was sealed once more. The Author was looking around, evidentially sniffing at everything. “Open the door while I attempt to figure out where your friend went… or where the creature is…” He sniffed some more. “Hrm… red hair. Interesting.”
Lyra reached towards the sealed door, ready to open it. Then something caught her eye. “Why is it glowing blue?”
“It’s a substance that keeps the creature from getting out.” The Author said dismissively.
“..Then why haven’t you gotten out?”
“The creature is usually guarding it. The thing isn’t a fan of me after all…”
Lyra thought for a second. She decided the story wasn’t that unusual, given what she’d seen in Gravity Falls lately-
Then she heard a sound. She looked down to see a tin can at her feet, displaying a mascot for some kind of bean product.
A mascot which looked exactly like the Author.
Lyra froze, heart racing. This was not the Author was it… She turned around slowly, to see the Author inches away from her face. “I’d really like to know where you got that can…”
Lyra began to chant, but the Author’s arm changed shape into a strange gelatinous substance that covered her mouth. “Shh…. no loud magic here little girl. None at all. Just you, me…” He grinned, turning his other hand into a chainsaw. “And a chainsaw.”
He - no it - began to chuckle as it raised the saw. “I can use your friend to open the door if I must, or I can just wait for the others to show up.” He slowly began to change form, into a strange white creature that looked very, very alien. The red eyes blinked. “And all of them will die coming to save you.”
Lyra heard a “SHINK.” The shapeshifter’s eyes widened. He howled in pain, releasing Lyra. An axe had been embedded in his back.
“So…” The shapeshifter said, turning around. “The other one has an axe? How pitiful.” He gagged, indicating that he was really injured.
Wendy rolled her eyes. “You need to practice your pretending not to be injured.”
“I am a shapeshifter! I will destroy you-“
Lyra cast the ice spell on him, surrounding him in a block of ice.
Wendy clapped. “Good job.”
Lyra frowned. “I… I was completely fooled by him until you tossed me that can…”
“Don’t mention it.” Wendy said, smiling. “It was just teamwork. Now let’s loot this place for cool stuff and get out.” Wendy grinned. “I’m going to so deck out my room.”
Lyra smiled, reaching for her journal. Then she groaned.
“Hey Wendy… think that axe can work as an icepick?”
[br]
As Wendy and Lyra took a while to tear Lyra’s journal out of the Shapeshifter’s very frozen hands, Twilight still held the two journals. In front of her was a very obviously incomplete device. It looked like two corners of a triangle.
“What the hay is this?” She asked, cocking her head. “There’s nothing on the other pages in the journals that suggest anything about it! It’s completely different..” She frowned. “Wait… maybe Journal 1 is different than the others… Perhaps it’s more technical…”
Rainbow Dash dropped in. “Hey Twi, what’s up?”
“This highly advanced machine is buried within these journals. I have been able to deduce that it channels a large portion of magical and nuclear energy over time to do.. something to the fabric of reality. I don’t know what.” She frowned. “It’s bugging me.”
Rainbow Dash nodded. “I wonder what it could be…”
Pinkie popped up from nowhere. “Maybe it’s a tool that unites long lost family!”
“Yeah Pinkie I don’t think that’s it.” Twilight said, chuckling. “It has a more… scientific purpose, I’m sure.”
Pinkie simply shrugged, bouncing off.
[br]
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Gravity Falls: Friendship is Magic 18: Sock War
“Well yesterday surely was interesting.” Rainbow Dash said.
“Eeyup.” Applejack responded, sipping her drink.
“Do you think that Sunset's okay?”
“She can take care of some pathetic golf ball people.”
“You sure?”
“Pretty sure.” Applejack said, downing her drink.
Rainbow Dash shrugged. “If you say so…”
Meanwhile, in the mini golf course-
“Can I go now? Pacifica probably needs me-”
“NEVER!!!” Franz said, holding up a tiny pencil. “YOU WILL WATCH OUR CHOREOGRAPHED DANCES FOR ETERNITY!”
Sunset sighed.
Back at the Shack, Rainbow rolled her eyes. “At least Pacifica isn’t a complete jerk.”
Applejack shrugged. “Still not a fan of her.”
“She’s not a fan of you either. But at least she’s not the epitome of evil.” Rainbow Dash frowned. “Though she doesn’t seem to care about her family being founded on a fraud…”
Applejack shrugged.
Twilight ran into the room. “Rainbow Dash! Now is the time!”
“For what?”
“Lyra brought back a password-protected laptop from the Bunker. We’re going to hack into it.”
Rainbow Dash’s eyes lit up. “Answers.. A laptop possibly created by the Author… Gimme that.” Rainbow said, grabbing the laptop and typing things in. “Password… Journal3… Journals…” Each password was promptly rejected by the computer. Rainbow Dash frowned. “Have a password spell Twilight?”
“Already tried it. It’s enchanted.”
Rainbow Dash cracked her knuckles. “I’m so going to get in here and find out all the answers… HEY LYRA WANT TO HELP?”
Twilight shook her head. “Lyra and Wendy are off adventuring, doing who knows what. Just you and me right now.”
Rainbow shrugged. “Their loss… can’t wait to crack the mysteries of this thing. It could have the information on Journal 1! Maybe it tells us what the device is! SO MANY ANSWERS!!!!”
Pinkie grabbed a random book off the shelf. “Here’s one on codes and secrets.”
Rainbow groaned. “We’re getting nowhere! Nothing! Nothing is helping! How are we going to hack into this thing?” She facedesked.
Twilight frowned. “I don’t know…” She frowned. “Perhaps we should sleep on it, come back to it tomorrow.”
Rainbow shook her head. “I am going to solve this if it kills me! Then I’ll try again next loop! I’m going to get this done!”
Twilight blinked. “Rainbow? You okay? You’ve gotten… oddly attached to this.”
“Twilight, you know I don’t let anything beat me. And this laptop isn’t going to be an exception!”
Twilight facehooved. “Good luck then. I’m going to go get some sleep-“
Their conversation was interrupted by the shrill sound of Pinkie getting angry. “You dare suggest that YOU could throw a better puppet party than the “uncivilized hovel” I obviously would come up with?”
Pinkie was steaming mad, glaring at some kid with blonde hair in a ponytail. On his hands were two puppets. “Of course, my puppet shows are supreme. Just look at what I threw together in five minutes, a two puppet show with a curtain and a sound system. You just pulled out a marshmallow.”
“But marshmallows can be eaten afterwards!”
“Eating isn’t the point of a puppet show. Puppet shows are an art…”
“That’s it. This friday in the Auditorium I am going to have a puppet show the likes of which the world has never seen. And you. Will. Be. Impressed. I am Pinkie Pie, founder of the Pinkie Emporium! You have no idea who you’ve just challenged!”
“I’ve been to the Pinkie Emporium. Was lame. Lack of puppet shows.”
Pinkie’s pupils shrunk to a tiny size. She twitched. She walked away slowly before she did anything… hasty. “Friday….” She said. She turned to Twilight. “I’m sorry guys I’ve got to show this blonde-haired puppeteer that Pinkie is the master of all kinds of parties, INCLUDING PUPPETS.” She ran off.
Twilight blinked.
Rainbow tried another password. A BEEP indicated she was incorrect yet again. Another face desk occurred.
It was well past midnight. Rainbow was getting really tired, but she had become completely focused on the laptop. This was rather unlike her, quite frankly, to be typing password after password into a laptop. She had become fixated. She would not let it defeat her.
She was using both her hands and her wings, typing up a storm.
Only eight characters. She would eventually just find it.
But, deep down, she expected there was some kind of narrative causality in effect that prevented her from simply finding it by randomly typing things.
She groaned. She was going to need some help. But who would know…
She blinked. Standing in front of her was a familiar triangular shape.
“YOU CALLED?”
Rainbow Dash squinted. “You. I didn’t call you.”
“AH AH AH BUT I KNOW THE ANSWER LOYALTY! I CAN HELP YOU WITH YOUR LITTLE LAPTOP PREDICAMENT.”
“It can’t be that easy.”
“FINE HAVE IT YOUR WAY, I’LL JUST GIVE YOU A HINT. BUT YOU NEED TO GIVE ME SOMETHING IN EXCHANGE.”
“Yeah no deal.” Rainbow Dash said, folding her hands. “Not a fan of you at the moment.”
Bill shrugged. “YOUR LOSS. I HAVE ALL THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNIVERSE, AND A BIT FROM BEYOND, AND YOU’RE TURNING ME DOWN.”
“Yeah. Obviously. You think I’m stupid?”
“YES. BUT THIS CHOICE IS FAR FROM A STUPID ONE. YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT, I GET WHAT I WANT-“
“Get lost Dorito.”
Bill looked angry for a few seconds, then shrugged. “OH WELL. BY THE WAY, HERE’S MY IMPRESSION OF YOU IN A FEW SECONDS: ZZZZZZZZZZ WHA- OW!”
“ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ” Suddenly, Rainbow Dash woke up with a “Wha?” She bonked her head on the overhang. “OW!”
She frowned. “He think’s he’s very hilarious doesn’t he…”
And she got back to work on the laptop.
“PEOPLE!” Pinkie announced. “WE NEED THE BIGGEST, BESTEST, MOST MIND BLOWING PUPPET PARTY OF ALL TIME.” She grinned one of her creepy grins. “I’ve already rented out the Auditorium. We have it for Friday. There will be lasers, giant stuffed animals, dragons, wars, and an epic story of an ancient race that preceded the puppets! A RACE WITH FINGERS!”
Lyra raised an eyebrow. “Why does that seem familiar?”
Rarity rolled her eyes. “It’s the tale of “Ancient Humans” in Equestria. Some Loops it's true, some Loops it’s not.”
“Oh I have a similar theory. I call it Ancient Horses.”
Rarity facehooved. “Of course you do.”
Pinkie raised her hand. “I will be performing as human rather than the normal pony performer I’ve been using. And I will have Twilight running the mechanics and the ropes and the pulleys and the special effects.”
Twilight gave a thumbs up as she tinkered with an overly complicated pulley system.
“Lyra will be writing the script because Rainbow Dash is sleep deprived, Rarity will be making costumes, and the rest of everyone available will be spreading the word! THIS WILL BE A LEGENDARY SHOW! And Gabe will be forced to concede that I know how to run a puppet show!”
Twilight rolled her eyes. Sure, Pinkie was going a bit overboard. But this would be fun. It would no doubt be a puppet show to be remembered…
“Rainbow…” Twilight said, cocking her head.
“I WASN’T NAPPING! I was… resting my face on the screen. That’s what. Trying to have the knowledge of the password float through my skull by process of diffusion. Yeah.”
Twilight sighed. “Rainbow you know better than this! You know you need sleep!”
“Nah.” Rainbow said, pulling a caffeine pill out of her pocket and shoving it into her mouth. “I’ve got supplies. I just forgot to take them.”
Twilight blinked, rolling her eyes. “That’s it, you’ve been like this for days. Goodnight Rainbow Dash.”
“Wha-“ Rainbow didn’t even have time to register the sleep spell.
She woke up in dream land. “Oh horsefeathers…” She looked around, realizing the dreamscape looked almost exactly like her room-
“HELLO THERE LOYALTY, HOW’S IT GOING? HACKED ANY LAPTOPS LATELY? READY TO BECOME THE BEST SECURITY TESTER KNOWN TO MAN? HOW’S ABOUT I CALL MY AGENT, SEE IF HE CAN HOOK YOU UP TO REALITY SO YOU CAN BEND IT TO YOUR WILL!” Bill descended into crazy laughter.
“Look can you just get lost?” Rainbow Dash grunted.
“YEAH NOT HAPPENING. UNFORTUNATELY FOR YOU I’M ALWAYS IN YOUR DREAMS. AND OOOH BOY DID I GET SOME NICE SNAPSHOTS! OVER THE COURSE OF THIS SUMMER!”
Rainbow Dash paled. “How much did you see?”
“ALL OF IT. INCLUDING THE LEPRECHAUNS AND THE CHERRIES. AND DISCORD’S ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL SENSE OF FASHION. NOT TO MENTION-“
“Shut up. Please.”
“HRM… NAH. IT’S MORE FUN THIS WAY.” Bill floated over to the laptop, looking at it. “YOU KNOW I’D STOP BUGGING YOUR DREAMS IF YOU JUST ACCEPTED MY DEAL. I’LL GIVE YOU AN HINT TO HELP SOLVE THE MYSTERIES OF THIS TOWN AND I’LL GET OUT OF YOUR DREAMS FOR SOMETHING SMALL IN RETURN.”
“Not happening, I still have time-“
Bill extended his finger and typed in a seemingly random string of numbers into the laptop. “OH LOOK, I’VE ARMED THE SELF DESTRUCT. THE ONLY WAY TO STOP IT IS TO TYPE IN THE CORRECT PASSWORD! I WONDER WHO WOULD KNOW THAT…”
Rainbow Dash’s pupils shrunk. “Oh no…”
Bill extended his hand, lighting it up with blue fire. “I SAY YOU HAVE ABOUT TWO MINUTES. SO WHAT ABOUT IT LOYALTY? ALL I NEED IS ONE OF YOUR SIBLING’S PUPPETS.”
Rainbow Dash’s face contorted into a rather confused expression. “You just want to sabotage the puppet show? How…” She shook her head. “Nevermind, you can have one.” She extended her hand.
Bill shook it, the fire engulfing the two. “NOW WE HAVE A DEAL! SO NOW WHICH PUPPET DO I WANT…”
“How about that one?” Rainbow Dash said, pointing to a random one on the ground. “Hurry that laptop is going to explode.”
“THIS IS A DREAM, LOYALTY, THAT LAPTOP ISN’T EVEN REAL.”
Rainbow Dash sputtered before face palming. “That… should have been obvious.”
“NOW WHICH PUPPET DO I WANT… I WANT ONE THAT’S IMPORTANT… ONE THAT’S VERY USEFUL… ONE THAT WOULD DO ALMOST ANYTHING FOR THEIR SISTERS, NO QUESTIONS ASKED…”
Rainbow Dash turned to stare right at Bill. “Wait what?”
Bill cackled, grabbing Rainbow Dash’s head. “GUESS WHAT? I CHOOSE YOU!”
In a split second, Rainbow Dash felt a tremendous psychic assault on her mind. She attempted to resist, forcing herself awake and entering alicorn form almost instantly. She put up as many mind-protection spells as she could think of within an instant. And she made sure she wasn’t just going to let him in without a fight. She gritted her teeth.
She heard him laugh, and then her determination wavered as all those spells were shattered in an instant. She felt herself torn from her body, launched into the spiritual plane. She watched with horror as her now-alicorn body stood up, eyes glowing yellow. The pupils were unnatural. Bill began to laugh. “THIS IS AWESOME! NEVER HAD THIS KIND OF BODY BEFORE! AND WINGS TOO! WITH MAGIC! THIS IS STATE OF THE ART!”
“Hey!” Rainbow Dash said, steaming. “You give that back! It’s mine!”
“WE MADE A DEAL, LOYALTY!”
“Oh yeah? Where’s my hint?”
Bill grabbed the laptop and broke it under his hooves. “THERE’S YOUR HINT.”
“Hey! That’s not a hint!”
“YOU SHOULD LEARN LOYALTY THAT I ALWAYS KEEP MY DEALS. YOU HAVE YOUR HINT. AHAHAHAHHAHAH!” With that laugh, Bill clapped his front hooves together, turning into a harpie form. “THIS WILL BE MUCH MORE PREFERABLE. NOW… WHAT AM I GOING TO DO THIS TIME?”
“What do you mean this time?”
Bill turned to look Rainbow Dash right in the eye. “DO YOU HONESTLY THINK I COULD KICK YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND WITHOUT BEING LOOP AWARE? COME ON LOYALTY, EVEN I DIDN’T THINK YOU WERE THAT DUMB.”
Rainbow Dash paled. “Crap. Not one of you.”
“YES ONE OF ME! ISN’T IT GREAT WHEN THERE’S NO WAY TO PREDICT SOMETHING? IT MUST MAKE YOUR LIVES MUCH MORE INTERESTING!”
Rainbow growled. “I’ll stop you!” She rushed towards him, punching.
Bill laughed. “YOU’RE JUST A SPIRIT NOW. AND IN THIS UNIVERSE, THAT DOESN’T LET YOU HAVE A FANCY SWORD THE SIZE OF YOUR ENTIRE BODY. YOU CAN DO NOTHING. AND I CAN DO STUFF LIKE THIS!” Bill waved a hand, causing a strange bear-trap-like mechanical device to appear.
“HOW’S ABOUT… I DESTROY THE JOURNALS WITH THIS DEVICE SEEMINGLY DESIGNED TO DESTROY NOTHING BUT BOOKS?”
Rainbow Dash blinked. ...Why? Why a bear trap?
“NOW I’M OFF TO TURN SOME BOOKS INTO SCOOTERS! SEE YOU!” And with that, Bill flew out the window.
Rainbow Dash groaned. She was a spirit. That couldn’t do anything. She floated down to the bottom floor of the Shack, waving her hooves. “TWILIGHT?”
Twilight just walked through her. Rainbow face palmed. Great. She couldn’t sense her….
Maybe Pinkie could. It was worth a shot. She should be right over-
“TIME TO GO TO THE AUDITORIUM EVERYONE!” Pinkie yelled from a… train. A train that didn’t exist two hours ago.
Rainbow attempted to get on the train, but it barreled away at Pinkie Pie speed. From the back of the train, she could see Bill. Bill in her body, waving at her with a rather amused look on his face.
Rainbow Dash went red with rage, and flew after them.
“Rainbow what are you doing with all that stuff?”
“Sifting through my Pocket.” Bill said in a completely normal voice, lying through his teeth. He couldn't access the Pocket, he was just using spells to make things appear. “Seeing what there is. It’s a real mess in there.”
Twilight walked into the back of the train car, spitting out a drink. “RAINBOW? What are you doing here? I put you to sleep!”
“And I woke up.” Bill said, twirling a golden cane. “What’s your point?”
Twilight sputtered. Then she sighed. “You had an anti sleep charm active didn’t you?”
Bill grinned, quickly causing an anti-sleep charm to come into existence. “I have a few of these.”
Lyra looked at her. “Hey could I get one of those?”
“Sorry hands, all under my control right now. Perhaps you could come talk to me later.”
Lyra groaned. “Why does everyone seem to think that I have to be fascinated with hands? Why?”
Bon Bon rolled her eyes. “Because you’re fascinated with just about everything.”
Bill looked out the back window at Rainbow Dash’s very invisible spirit. He giggled. She wasn’t going to be able to do anything.
He always enjoyed toying with them.
Pinkie pressed a button, and it all set up instantly. Show time was in less than a minute.
She grinned. This was going to be the best ever! Amazing! Phenomenal! Outstanding! And she was going to show that Gabe who was boss… Oooooooh yes…
She revved up the engine for the special effects. “LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED PEOPLE!”
At the edge of the stage, Bill set down the book eating device that looked oddly like a bear trap. He wound it up, and let it loose. He grinned. It would find all the Journals and eat them. And-
“ACK! GET IT AWAY FROM ME!” Rarity pointed at the machine and cast a magic missile at it, causing the sharp robot to explode.
Bill’s eye twitched. There was more - “yawn” - where that came from. He caught himself yawning. Can’t be shoved out of a body simply by getting exhausted now, that would be foolhardy. Needed to come up with another idea… A way to get Journal 1, 2, and Lyra’s all at once without looking suspicious…
He grinned. He’d make it look like part of the play had gone wrong. And from a recent excursion into Lyra’s mind he knew exactly when the real industrial strength lasers were going to come in… This would be great!
He just had to be up there during act 2…
Sure enough, as act 2 came, he found himself on top of the balcony, ready to activate the Journal-incinerating lasers. All three of them were in this building-
“It was really clever, making sure you didn’t trigger my Pinkie Sense.”
Bill froze. Then he let out a laugh. “WHY PINKIE, YOU KNOW I’M PLAYING A GAME HERE, AND I HAD TO TAKE SPECIAL MEASURES FOR YOU.”
Beside Pinkie the spirit of Rainbow Dash floated up. “You’re not going to get any of those Journals, Dorito.”
Bill turned to Pinkie. “I KNOW YOU CAN’T SEE HER. HOW’D YOU KNOW?”
“Well, Rainbill Bash, she had to possess my tail and make it twitch. Then I’d realized I hadn’t felt my Pinkie Senses in a long time, almost all week. So I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t that hard to find you after that.”
Bill shrugged. “YOU ARE MOST INTERESTING, PINKIE PIE. BUT ALL I HAVE TO DO IS PRESS THIS BUTTON-“
Pinkie was suddenly standing in top of the laser machine, somehow having already driven a stake through it. “You were saying?”
Bill groaned. “THIS. THIS IS WHY I HATE BEING STUCK IN THE MINDSCAPE.” He shrugged. “OH WELL I CAN JUST SHOOT THEM MYSELF I SUPPOSE. I CAN PROBABLY LASER ONE OR TWO WITH MY OWN POWER BEFORE ANYONE REALIZES WHAT’S UP. I SHALL RAIN DOWN FIERY NACHO CHEESE!” As “Rainbill Bash” raised his (her? its?) hands, it seemed as if lightning crackled.
Then Pinkie tackled the body to the ground, and began talking at several thousand words a second. “And so then I thought “Arrows? Why arrows? It’s like oatmeal! We need a big load of the things before we can even consider providing Lyra her pants which reminds me we need to make jeggings and socks a thing for the masses to enjoy along with balloons and parties and cake and caffeine and happy fun-“
Bill blinked. “WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING? HOW DOES THIS-“
He saw the spirit of Rainbow Dash holding her ears in pain. “Make it stop…”
Bill sighed. “WELL CRAP. THIS BODY CAN’T HANDLE THE NOISE. HEY LOYALTY, YOUR CAPACITY TO HANDLE YOUR OWN FRIEND’S BANTER SUCKS.”
“Too… much… talking…”
Bill felt himself tossed from the body. He sighed. He was just talked out of it. It didn’t even make logical sense.
Then again, he supposed that was why he liked Pinkie Pie. He shrugged.
“I’M COMING BACK, AND WHEN I DO, I WON’T BE INCONVENIENCED SO EASILY!”
Then he vanished from the material realm.
Rainbow Dash managed to crawl back into her body, groaning. “I… I need sleep…”
“Yes. Yes you do.” Twilight cast the sleep spell again. Rainbow Dash began to sleep (and snore) soundly.
Pinkie grinned. “Yay another problem solved!”
“THAT PUPPET SHOW SUCKED!” Gabe yelled from the crowd.
“TALK TO THE PARTY CANNON YOU UNAPPRECIATIVE HOOFBAG!”
BLAM.
“Agent Sweetie Drops calling in. Evidentially there is a being capable of possession at large working against the sextuplets. I can almost definitely assure everyone that this being, whoever or whatever he is, is not a potential ally of any sort. We must guard carefully against him. A full transcript of what I overheard follows.
He seems to be planning something large scale. Lyra had mentioned him before, but I had dismissed him as simply a creature of dreams.
He is planning something, something big, and we are all wrapped up in it.”
sity nij ypt tl cowcjvr, mvt zl yaa zpzp esiurj ux uja dwfenl khia bvjzoe wegekgt.
Gravity Falls: Friendship is Magic 19: The one that is regular snip sized.
“We stopped the unholy combination of dating simulators and Five Night’s at Freddy’s!” Pinkie Pie said, a grin plastered across her face.
Rainbow Dash was staring at a wall, pondering life. “I… I feel so proud right now. We did it.”
“Why is Rainbow Dash so… blank faced?” Twilight asked.
Pinkie shrugged. “I think the blow to the head had something to do with it.”
“I feel like there is a metaphor to life…”
“Or maybe she sampled Tree Hugger’s pizza…”
[br]
Stan threw open the door at the very nondescript human who had arrived at his door.
“GO AWAY BEFORE I MAKE YOU ONE OF MY EXHIBITS!”
The human, whose gender was completely indeterminate, ran off in fear. Heh. I love doing that.
[br]
“BUT I COULD HELP YOU COMPLETE IT!”
“No.” Twilight said, ignoring the Dorito.
“OR I COULD JUST TELL YOU WHAT IT DOES…”
“No.” Twilight responded. “I will not fall for your tricks."
Bill shrugged, before giving Twilight a nightmare about a quesadilla.
[br]
Here is the spot a code is normally placed. Endearing as that idea is, it’s not worth it to put it on a snip that took like five minutes to cook up. I mean, who needs a code every part anyway? Seriously. Who needs to put one everywhere? And what would the code be? There are only so many secrets a person can make! C’mon. Have a little coolness. I won’t put a code here, and you can just decode the next one. Not like all of you decode the things anyway. Great.
Gravity Falls: Friendship is Magic 20: Unusual Investigations.
Twilight examined the wreckage of the laptop. “All of this is completely useless! Are you SURE he said he gave you a hint?”
“Positive!” Rainbow Dash responded, arms folded. “He said he gave me the hint right then and there!”
“Maybe it was more metaphorical?”
Lyra flipped through all the Journals. “I just can’t find anything… there are hardly any mentions of him at all, and those there are say that he does keep his deals, though he skews them as much as he can. He must’ve given us a hint of some kind…”
“Maybe it was just a hint to mind our own business.” Rainbow Dash huffed.
In a nearby bed, Pinkie let out a loud snore.
Twilight looked back at the smashed laptop. “We have to tread carefully, he’s a Loop Aware entity. It probably won’t be possible to just overpower him with our abilities if it comes to that. We’ll need a backup plan.”
“And we know like nothing about him!” Rainbow said, holding up Journals 2 and 3 to their respective Bill Cipher pages. “And the information even contradicts itself!”
“And then there’s that WHEEL…” Lyra said, shuddering. “Symbols… Symbols everywhere… All enigmatic and mysterious… WHAT DO THEY MEAN?”
Twilight began to pace. “What can we do… What can we do… We need a place to find more information…”
Pinkie snored once more.
Lyra lit up. “We could go talk to the Shapeshifter.”
Rainbow Dash grinned. “Oh that’ll be fun…”
Twilight shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Come on, the Bunker is a ways off. We’d better get going…”
And with that, the three girls left the Shack, leaving Pinkie to snore.
A few minutes later Applejack, Rarity, and Fluttershy entered the room. “Huh. Guess they left.” Applejack observed.
Fluttershy shrugged. “Maybe they discovered something-“
“And they left this horrid mess of machine bits everywhere!” Rarity exclaimed. She pointed her finger, using her magic to get the laptop bits off the floor. “Honestly, it’s been several quadrillion years at this point. You think they’d know to clean up after themselves…”
Fluttershy looked at one of the pieces floating in midair. “McGucket labs…” She read aloud.
Applejack raised an eyebrow. “McGucket? Like, Ol’ Man McGucket? His labs? That sounds a might far fetched…”
“Look at it. It’s right there.” Fluttershy said, handing Applejack the mechanical bit. Sure enough, in really small print that was probably obscured by a lot of mechanical pieces, the logo of a McGucket labs was right there. Applejack cocked her head.
“Well this is mighty interestin.’ We should probably go ask the ol’ feller about it, see if he wants his laptop pieces back. Or if he can fix it. Dunno why the others haven’t thought of that yet, he is pretty good with machines.”
Rarity nodded. “Of course! Maybe it has some long lost pictures of his family! Or his past! Something to help him live in that horrid hovel in the junkyard the townspeople have forced him into…”
Fluttershy nodded. “It’s the least we could do.”
And with that, the three ponies picked up the laptop’s pieces and headed to the junkyard.
Twilight was very carefully melting the Shapeshifter. Rainbow Dash had re-sealed the door and was actively barricading it with rocks. Lyra was setting up magical traps all around the Shapeshifter.
“This is going to take a few hours to me to melt properly…” Twilight said.
Rainbow Dash groaned. “Really? A few hours? Ugh…”
Lyra looked up from her work. “Come on Rainbow, I’m sure it’s going to be very interesting. And I seriously doubt he’s going to talk to us without you kicking his flank first. Or whatever body part makes up his rear when you end up kicking it.”
“What if he turns into something that doesn’t have a rear?” Twilight asked.
Lyra pondered this. “I have no idea… perhaps we can experiment?”
“Oh Fiddleford…” Fluttershy said softly, barely tapping on Old Man McGucket’s door. “We’d like to see you, if that isn’t too much of a-“
“COME ON COME IN! I just caught a junkyard rat and was looking for some people to share it with!” McGucket cackled. “My kids never developed a taste for this.”
Rarity twitched. “That’s… quite all right darling, but we’re here to talk about something else.”
Applejack dropped the sack with the laptop pieces into a random table in the barely-standing home. “We found your name on this…”
McGucket scratched his head. “Well Ah gotta say I’m thankful, and this does look mighty familiar, but I don’t remember anythin’ about this… McGucket Labs. Don’t remember much of anything really. I have two kids, I know that. Tate likes to play ball now! And if I recall you were the ones who helped me with him!” He hugged all three of them. Fluttershy smiled, while Applejack and Rarity squirmed. “Now if only I could find my little girl…”
“Perhaps we could help you remember?” Fluttershy offered. “If you do, you’d know about this laptop and about your past!”
McGucket smiled. “You’ve already helped me so much… so generous the lot of you!” McGucket cracked his knuckles. “Let’s go on a memory scavenger hunt! Right after we eat this rat.” He dug in hungrily. Rarity squirmed again. Over dinner, he told them what he remembered. He, for some reason, was extremely good with machines and remembered making hundreds over his life, although the memories were jumbled. He remembered almost nothing at all from before thirty years ago. He did know he had two kids, but he had no idea who the mother was or when they were even born. His earliest definite memory was waking up in the Gravity Falls Museum of History, in the eye exhibit.
In under ten minutes the four of them were at the eye exhibit.
Rarity shuddered. “I feel like they’re watching us.”
Fluttershy nodded. “I know the feeling…”
Applejack squinted. “They’re not watching us… all these eyeballs are looking at that fireplace right there…” She pressed a button, revealing a secret passage behind the glowing furnace.
McGucket blinked. “Ya know, this is a mighty ominous tunnel that I am somewhat disturbed I remember nothin’ about. Let’s go in and party!”
They descended into the secret passage, looking left and right, wondering what they would find. They heard footsteps coming towards them. Rarity quickly cast an invisibility spell to hide them.
“Well that’s mighty fancy!” McGucket praised.
“Shush! It’s an invisibility spell not a silencing spell!” Rarity retorted.
The four went silent as a group of two people in long, red dark robes passed by them. On the foreheads of the hoods was an eye with an X across it.
“Is it just me, or does that look like Bill’s eye?” Applejack commented.
Fluttershy shivered. “It does.”
Rarity raised an eyebrow. “That means they’re his enemies right? Maybe they can help us.”
“Ah dunno…” Applejack said. “They seem rather spooky to me…”
“Ah get a bad feelin’ about them.” McGucket said.
Rarity walked on ahead. “What are we waiting for? Let’s follow them!”
The four followed the red robed men into a central chamber of some kind, where two people were tied up: Lazy Susan and Derpy. Derpy was telling Susan that “I just don’t know what went wrong!”
Around them the people in robes were chanting “Novus ordo seclorum.”
Then one robed man, taller than all the others, walked into the circle. “Who is the subject of our meeting?”
One of the other men gestured to Lazy Susan and Derpy. “These women.”
The taller man walked up to the two of them. “What is it you have seen?”
“Speak!” Chanted all the others.
“Uh, well, uh, I was leaving the diner, and I saw these little bearded doodads, and I was, like, Bwaaa?”
Derpy continued with her own story. “My muffin came to life right after that.”
The lead man took out some kind of gun with a lightbulb at the tip. He typed something into it. “There there, you won’t be like “Bwaaa” for much longer… And you will not feel the horror of your food coming for revenge…” He methodically blasted the two women with the gun. “Now, what do you recall?”
Both of them, at the same time responded in a monotone voice. “My mind is cleared thanks to the Society of the Blind Eye!”
The Society changed. “It is unseen!”
Rarity, Applejack, and Fluttershy’s jaws dropped. They had just cleared a person’s memory!
Slowly, the three turned to look at McGucket. “They took yer memories, didn’t they?” Applejack said.
McGucket slowly nodded. “Ah believe so…”
As some members escorted Lazy Susan and Derpy away, the evident leader took a strange tube out of the memory gun and walked down a hallway.
Rarity squinted. “Time to find where they store those memories…”
Slowly, the four invisible people crept up behind the leader as he walked into a hall covered in memory tubes from top to bottom. The vast majority were just stored on shelves, but a few were placed at the end of the hallway in a special design. The leader took out a marker, wrote “Lazy Susan and Derpy” on the tube, and gently set it on the shelf.
He turned around. “I know you’re there. Nothing escapes my eye.” He took his hood down, revealing a bald, stern looking man with a false eye.
Rarity dropped the spell. “Then why did you let us see that?”
“So we could corner you, of course.” The other members stepped out from behind them. They were trapped in the hallway.
Applejack glared. Rarity gasped. “Who are you people?”
“I am Blind Ivan” The leader said. The other members lowered their hoods as well, revealing a cast of characters many people remembered from around town. Toby Determined. Bud Gleeful. The guy who married a woodpecker. Berry Punch. Maud.
“Maud?” Fluttershy said, cocking her head. “I don’t remember seeing you around…”
“Oh. She knows my name. Interesting.” Maud said, completely deadpan.
Blind Ivan shrugged. “She won’t for much longer.”
Fluttershy looked up at the tall man. “Why? Why do you do this? Can’t you see it’s harming people?”
Blind Ivan simply held the memory gun up to his head and fired. “Not anymore. But to answer your question in a more simple matter, we do it because the burden of knowledge is a strong one. We make sure none know of the mysteries of gravity falls, so that they will not suffer from what they have seen. We are dedicated to erasing all of the weird, ever since a traumatizing event our founder experienced long ago. It apparently inspired our logo. But nobody but the Receiver remembers anything about that, and she’s not here right now.”
He smiled. “We take it upon ourselves to help the troubled townsfolk of Gravity Falls. Thanks to us they are able to go around having a happy, normal, ignorant life just like everyone else in the world. As a bonus we can make ourselves forget about bad memories. Everyone has things they’d rather forget. Though at this point none of us know what exactly we treated for this.” He shrugged.
Applejack sighed. “Look, I know you think yer doin’ good here, but there are dangerous things out in these woods that probably kill people. And you probably make sure that nobody even remembers those who have been killed! It’s very dangerous what you’re doing!”
Blind Ivan shook his head. “There are some things here that are not meant to be remembered. Have you ever encountered a Gremloblin? I can see from the looks on your faces at least some of you have. It drove someone to madness didn’t it? We cure that. We stop that. We prevent that. We can’t discriminate, since we don’t know what exactly will drive each person to madness. The only reason we’d been leaving you lot alone was because the Receiver has told us never to go near that Shack. But trust me, we’ve had to erase a lot from the people you’ve encountered…”
Rarity’s eyes widened. “So that’s why Rainbow can fly around and nobody seems to care…”
“Now…” Blind Ivan said, holding up the memory gun. “Time to make you forget this entire day.” He pulled the trigger.
Rarity put up a reflect spell, sending the beam back. Blind Ivan dodged it. “Impressive spell. But we have a few mages of our own here you know.” He waved his hand, fire appearing in his hand. “We will never let our secrets out!”
McGucket grabbed onto his hat. “Oh no… This is going to go down!”
The Society of the Blind Eye cast several spells at the four intruders, all of which were quickly deflected. Rarity lit up her hand, encasing all the members in crystal. She shook her head. “You know nothing about finer magic, ruffians.” She levitated the memory gun into her hand. “We really need to stop these hooligans from ruining any more lives… But how can we do that…”
“Just make ‘em forget about the Society.” Applejack answered. “Simple enough. All of them aside from Ivan here seem to have lives they can get back to.”
They quickly erased the society from everyone’s mind, sending them on their way. But they didn’t erase Blind Ivan’s memory.
Fluttershy looked down at the man before her. “You should feel ashamed of yourself.”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done? The Weirdness will spread! You will no longer be safe!”
Fluttershy sighed. “What are we going to do with him?”
“…Let’s take him back to Stan. Maybe he has a suggestion.” Rarity offered. “But first…” She walked up to the altar where special memories were stored, and found the tube labelled Fiddleford Hadron McGucket. She plugged the tube into a memory screen.
The memories were horribly garbled, but the three Loopers, McGucket, and Ivan were witness to a rather harrowing story. It told the story of a young man, a Fiddleford hadron McGucket, who had come to Gravity Falls to work on a big project with the Author, though the Author was never seen in the memories. Nor was he ever actually named. Shortly after the memories were all a panic, about a young man wishing to unsee what he had seen. Something terrible, something unspeakable, something that drove him to madness. Something that drove him to invent the memory gun. Something that drove him to found the Society of the Blind Eye, to keep everyone from having to suffer what he had suffered.
The memories became more jumbled and crazy. There were scattered images of people around town, mostly of Tate and some girl who looked very familiar. Images of McGucket slowly going crazy, losing his mind, and defacing every triangle with an eye he could find.
The feed went dead.
Blind Ivan’s jaw was hanging open. “So that’s how our society was founded…” He shook his head. “I am terribly sorry, Founder, but memory tubes that old are highly unstable. It is unlikely you can restore all the memories you wish to.”
McGucket sighed. “You know what? Part of that old me was right, I probably don’t want to remember all of what happened back then. But that was no excuse to go around creating a society to wipe things from the minds of everyone. What I saw was probably a special case.” He turned to the girls. “I’m sorry… Things are starting to come back to me, my memory was jogged a little bit, but everything’s still very fuzzy.”
Fluttershy hugged him. “It’s okay, we’ll be here for you regardless of what happens.” Rarity and Applejack responded with an affirmative.
“I’d still like that laptop. Maybe I can find out more from it.”
“Be our guest.”
And then the four of them carried Blind Ivan out of the secret society.
“Want to talk YET?”
“YES YES I’LL TALK STOP BEATING ME UP ALREADY!”
“Good!” Rainbow Dash said, relenting. The Shapeshifter stood up, groaning. “Now, first question, who is the Author?”
“I don’t know his name for sure. He was almost always alone with me. The only other person I saw during my imprisonment called him Ford, though it was an obvious nickname. He had six fingers on each hand, if that helps.”
Twilight frowned. Ford. Well there was a nickname at least, though it wasn’t much to go on. But she didn’t remember anyone at all with six fingers in town… So it was probably someone they hadn’t met yet. They’d just have to find them. “Can you tell us anything about Bill Cipher?”
“Oh that guy.” The Shapeshifter said, chuckling. “He was fun. He came down every so often, was good for a laugh. Called the Author Sixer all the time. I think they had a falling out shortly before they both just stopped coming down here.”
Twilight nodded. She knew that the Author had trusted Bill for at least a little while already, and that he had come to regret it. The details were still elusive.
“Do you know anything else about him? His plans? His desires? His weaknesses?”
The Shapeshifter grunted. “Nope. Nothing. He always talked through the Author anyway, I don’t know what he’s really like.”
Twilight nodded. Possession. She had expected that.
The Shapeshifter looked closely at Lyra. “You know, I keep thinking that I remember you from somewhere…”
“I’m not even thirty years old. There’s no way.”
“Which makes it very interesting… why do I think I remember you?”
Twilight marked down “possibility of time travel” in her notes. “Thank you for your time. Now, we unfortunately can’t let you loose on the world above, but leaving you down here to rot for more decades would just be cruel. I’ll have Rarity come down here to furnish this cavern up for you, bring food, and everything. If we feel like we can trust you, maybe we’ll let you out one day.” She looked right into the shapeshifter’s eyes. “And I’ll know if you’re trustworthy. I can read your mind if I have to.”
The Shapeshifter sighed. At least it was a better life than what he was used to. Maybe he’d actually get a good meal rather than just surviving on magical aura.
“Deal.” He said.
“Good.” Twilight said, smiling. “I know we’ll become great friends! I’ll bring everyone down here from time to time.”
“I am not dealing with him.” Stan said firmly.
“But we can’t just erase his memory, that’d be cruel!” Fluttershy complained. “He’d be a shell of person without the life he put into that!”
“So? It’s what happens to him in baseline.” Stan responded, managing to sell a shirt to a customer. “Just get it over with.”
“No.” Rarity said. “We aren’t barbarians.”
Stan chuckled. “Could have fooled me.” He walked around, getting back to business.
The three sighed. “What now?”
Twilight walked into the room. “Hey girls… who’s this guy?”
“Blind Ivan.” Rarity responded. “We need to find a place to keep him where he won’t cause trouble.”
Twilight’s eyes sparkled. “Oooh I have just the place. I was just coming here to ask you if you’d furnish up the Bunker for our friend the Shapeshifter, we made a deal with him. You could put Ivan in there as well!”
“Furnish up a cavern?” Rarity said, eyes sparkling. “That’d surely be a nice challenge…”
Rainbow Dash, currently with wings, ran into the door. “WHY IS THERE AN ANGRY MOB AFTER ME? I’VE BEEN FLYING AROUND FOR OVER A MONTH AND NO ONE HAS HAD A PROBLEM!”
Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rarity all became rather sheepish. “Well, ya see… that may be our fault…”
Blind Ivan and the Shapeshifter were in the cavern playing a game of chess while Rarity furnished around.
“So what’s your story?” Ivan asked.
“Was hatched from an extraterrestrial egg by some six fingered mad scientist. Kept down here for almost all of my life since then.”
“Ah. I don’t remember much of my story. I suspect it was really tragic though, seeing as how I have tattoos all over my forehead corresponding to various sections of my brain. Also considering the fact that this is a magical fake eye.”
“Must be rather interesting, not knowing one's own past.”
Ivan shrugged. “I live with it just fine.”
“Checkmate.”
“Darnit.”
July 2012,
The Founder, Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, returned to us, wishing to remember his past. In the process, him and his group erased all knowledge of the Society from all the members, and took current leader Blind Ivan to an unknown location. His fate remains unknown.
The Society has fallen, so this will likely be the last entry in our Chronicle. I am also using this last entry as a notice of my resignation from the Society: it has become evident that we were going about protecting Gravity Falls the wrong way. I will continue to carry the burden on my own.
May this Chronicle never be uncovered, and if it is, never let it drive others to the insanity that comes from the Beast with One Eye. May I be able to protect this town. Our town.
The Receiver of the Blind Eye Society,
Starlight G McGucket
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Gravity Falls: Friendship is Magic: 21: More Time Troubles
“I CHALLENGE YOU TO GLOBNAR!” Blendin Blandin said, standing before Twilight, Pinkie, and Rainbow Dash.
The three Loopers cocked their heads. “Which one of us?” Twilight asked.
“ALL THREE OF YOU!” The time agent’s voice squeaked.
“Wouldn’t that be unfair?” Twilight said. “I mean, it’d be three on one, and you probably know we aren't pushovers-“
“GLOBNAR IS THE MOST DANGEROUS COMPETITION OF ALL TIME! YOU MUST ALL FACE ME!”
Pinkie glared at Blendin. “Take the two of them, I’m busy right now.”
“BUT-“
“No buts. You can come back for me later. I’ve got a large man-gopher to cheer up.” She walked off.
Rainbow Dash grinned. “So. Globnar. Competition. You challenge us. This should be fun.”
“YOU WRONGED ME AND I WILL PUT YOU BACK IN YOUR PLACE!”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Do you have to shout everything?”
“UH… no. Sorry. WAIT NO I’M NOT SORRY!”
Twilight shrugged, as she and Rainbow were taken into the future to experience Globnar… The most dangerous and challenging competition of all time and space!
Meanwhile, back in Gravity Falls, Pinkie had a mission. Fluttershy had tagged along.
“So… what’s wrong with Soos again?”
Pinkie’s face was stern. “His birthday makes him sad. This cannot be allowed to stay. I need to figure out what is causing the problem and make his birthday the best. Birthday. Ever.”
Fluttershy nodded, understanding. Enjoying birthdays was serious business after all. “So how are we going to figure out what’s bothering him?”
“Why ask him of course!”
Fluttershy raised an eyebrow. “Um… you aren’t going to try your usual method of asking things are you?”
“What do you mean?”
Fluttershy sighed, thinking of more than a few moments where Pinkie had completely ruined anything because of her near lack of restraint. Some things required calmness. “I’ll go talk to him.” She said, walking ahead. “Do not use any party cannons while I’m doing it.”
It took her less than a minute to find the large man, who looked rather depressed in stark contrast to his normal happy and blissful self. She frowned, walking up to him. “Soos? What’s wrong?”
“Oh.. it’s nothing Flutters.” Soos said, sighing dramatically.
Fluttershy shook her head. “Something’s obviously bothering you, and I’m not the only one who’s noticed. Everyone sees your sadness. We just want to help.”
“There’s probably not much you can do to help.” He responded.
“Soos, even if we didn’t have amazing powers and magic all around us, we can still be your friends.” She smiled. “And I think right now you need someone to lean on.”
Soos smiled sadly. “Thank you Flutters. You’re really nice, you know that?”
Fluttershy nodded, smiling. “We want to know how we can help you Soos. We are your friends, and we can’t stand to see you so down today. How can we help?”
Soos sighed. “I don’t think you can. You aren’t him.”
“Who?”
Soos paused for a moment, deciding if he would tell Fluttershy or not. “My dad. He never came to any of my birthday parties as a kid. I rarely ever saw him at all. All I got every year was a postcard.” Soos pulled something out of his shirt. “I got another one today. I haven’t seen his face since I was really little, but I keep getting these.”
Fluttershy’s eyes widened.
“I just… I wanted to see him, you know? I want to at least be with him for one moment. And every time my birthday comes around I get one of these and I’m reminded that I never have, and likely never will. I just… want to see him.”
Fluttershy stood up. “Then we can go find him.”
Soos blinked. “How?”
“We can pool our resources. Use our abilities.” She smiled. “We can find him.” She paused for a moment, frowning slightly. “Though I should warn you he may not be what you want…”
Soos stood up. “I don’t care. I want to see him.” He turned to Fluttershy, eyes pleading. “Do you think you could find him?”
She smiled. “I’ll get Rarity and Pinkie right on it.”
Soos smiled. “Thank you Flutters.” He grinned. “Maybe I can see him after all.”
“I, THE GREAT TIME BABY, DECLARE GLOBNAR TO BEGIN!”
Twilight blinked. The ruler of the highly advanced future was a giant baby. What. The. Buck.
Rainbow Dash flew up. “Wait! What are the rules?”
Time Baby sighed, taking a baby bottle out of his mouth that he had just begun to enjoy. “GLOBNAR IS A SERIES OF OVER A HUNDRED EVENTS THAT EACH OF THE SIDES MUST COMPETE IN EACH OTHER AGAINST. GET THE MOST WINS, YOU GET A TIME WISH AND GET TO DECIDE THE FATE OF THE LOSER OR LOSERS. FIRST EVENT IS TEMPORAL TENNIS, GO.”
Twilight and Rainbow suddenly discovered that they had tennis rackets in their hands with clocks on their handles. Blendin had one as well. “The fun part about this game is that it’s played in reverse!” He said.
Rainbow Dash groaned. She hated things where time made no sense. So she had to play in reverse-
“Wait.” She said. “Wouldn’t that mean we already know the score?”
“This isn’t scored like regular Tennis!” Blendin said, grinning. “The score is ten to ten right now. You just have to guide the balls to keep from losing points due to paradox!”
“Crap.”
As the two Loopers played against Blendin, a certain blue phone box appeared in the bleachers. The Doctor stepped out, with a very ticked off expression on his face. “Great. I really shouldn’t be here. Time authorities can be really annoying…”
“Doctor, you are under arrest for interrupting an official Globnar competition. Please, surrender your TARDIS and come with us.”
The Doctor sighed. “Fine, fine, don’t let me explain that I ended up here completely by accident.” He paused, turning to glare at the Tardis. “Or, more likely, it was her fault…”
“You will come with us. Now.”
“Fine fine hold your horses…” The Doctor said, following them. He stole a glance at who was in Globnar. HIs eyes widened. Twilight and Rainbow Dash.
Well then, he supposed he was going to run into them again eventually… Though he honestly didn’t expect the future.
“MOVE IT!”
“Allright! Allright! Yeesh!”
Back in the stadium, Rainbow Dash and Twilight won Temporal Tennis 10 - 0. Blendin’s jaw hit the ground.
Twilight whispered to Rainbow Dash. “I saw the Doctor get taken away. Since this doesn’t look like it’s going to be that difficult, I’m leaving you with a magic shell of myself. You can win on your own can’t you?”
“Easy peasy.” Rainbow said, grinning.
“Good.” Twilight quickly created a magical shell of herself to play the games with Rainbow. She teleported into the audience the instant she was away. Strangely, the audience (which composed of aliens, robots, and strange beings she had no real words for) paid her no mind. They were completely fixated on Globnar.
Now to find the Doctor.
Fluttershy knocked on the door. Soos’s Abuelita welcomed her in. “Ah, Soos’s friend. Welcome to my house.”
“Miss Ramirez.” Fluttershy said, walking in. “Soos recently asked us to look for his father. I wanted to know if you knew anything he did- oh no.” Fluttershy noticed the old woman’s face darken.
“I… I am terribly sorry little one. I know nothing about his whereabouts.”
Fluttershy knew that was a lie, but she also knew something else.
“…How bad was he?”
Abuelita turned to look at the diminutive pink girl before her. Her expression softened. “Children like you do not need to be burdened with tales of the past. That is far behind us now.”
“Soos just got another postcard though.”
Abuelita tensed. “He… He still sends them?”
“Yes. I saw today’s just under an hour ago.”
Abuelita tightened her fists. “Who does he think he is…”
Fluttershy frowned. “…he really was that bad wasn’t he?”
“The man dropped Soos off with me when he was barely a baby, and I saw him less than ten times after that. He never calls me, never writes, and I had thought he’d stopped sending those postcards.” She sighed. “I guess Soos just stopped showing them to me.”
Fluttershy’s head drooped. “He… he wasn’t a good person was he?”
“No. He was not. It was more than just being caught up in work, he was…” She paused. “Uncaring.”
Fluttershy looked around, as if trying to find something. “There must be some way we can cheer him up though… and It’s already going to be bad enough telling him we aren’t going to find his dad for him anymore…”
Abuelita frowned. “Maybe he does need to find his father, to see who the man really is…” She sighed. “I don’t know where my son is. He was in Japan last I knew, and that was years ago.”
Fluttershy sighed. “Thanks anyway. I’ll go break the news to him.”
While Globnar was 21 to 3 (Rainbow Dash’s lead) Twilight explored the future. That was all she could call this place, seeing as she had no other idea of where she was. She was just following the Doctor’s rather unique temporal signature with a spell, attempting to navigate the time-anomaly filled corridors.
She had seen a lot of pictures of Time Baby, like he was worshipped as some kind of god or supreme ruler. The time agents were everywhere, disappearing and reappearing left and right. Twilight noticed, to her pride, that they were using several dozen sets of pronouns to differentiate from different forms of time travel tenses. Good for them.
But she had to find the Doctor and get him out. She began to speed up, trying to navigate the confusing halls of time. She considered using time spells, but she had no idea how a place like this would respond to them.
After crossing three feet in five hours (TIME ANOMALIES!!!) she arrived to see two time agents escorting the Doctor through the building.
She walked towards them. They reacted instantly, drawing time weapons yelling. “THERE’S THAT GIRL WHO TRIED TO FREE THE PRISONER!”
Crap. Time anomalies made things really annoying. She felt the weapon’s shot impact her, knocking her through time. She landed on top of the Doctor.
“Who’s this?” One of the agents said.
“SHE’S TRYING TO FREE THE PRISONER!” The other yelled, shooting at Twilight again.
Twilight facepalmed as the time annoyances continued.
Rarity frowned.
The computer had come up with Soos’ dad alright. It had only taken a few searches to find him.
The man was in jail in some far off foreign country for unspeakable crimes.
She shuddered.
Stan stood in the doorway, sighing. “Don’t take it too hard.”
“Why? Soos’s father.. this man.. he’s a horrible person! A crime against everything!”
“It’s different every time.”
“What?”
“The Loops can’t decide on what Soos’s dad is really like. Sometimes he’s a nice guy who had a good reason for being away. Sometimes he’s a master criminal. Sometimes he’s just a jerk. It’s always different. I should know, I’ve found the man dozens of times.” He sighed. “Just.. know that sometimes he does have a good reunion. That sometimes everything does work out. But mostly… not.”
Rarity sighed. “We… we’re going to have to tell him no aren’t we?”
Pinkie appeared in the room, face contorted in anger.
“I found him.” She said. “He’s the most jerky grumpy pants ever. Just… GRAGH! That man has ruined birthday parties for Soos forever! What are we going to do to help him? How?”
Stan sighed. “You know what I can’t stand to see this. Soos generally will begin to move past it if you give him a good birthday by spending all day with him doing things. He just needs a little push.”
Rarity blinked. “But… that’s what Pinkie was going to do in the first place before Fluttershy suggested going soft…”
Stan snorted. “Sometimes a guy needs a little push.”
Pinkie lit up. “Oh! I know! Laser tag! He loves that! LET’S SPEND ALL DAY DOING THAT!”
Rarity smiled. “I’ll go get Fluttershy…”
“Where are you going Twilight?”
Twilight turned to see the Doctor. “Oh. You freed yourself.” She groaned. “This place is confusing.”
“Actually if my theories are correct I get captured again in about fifteen minutes.” He shrugged. “And then I think I get freed over there and you get me back to the Tardis.”
Twilight blinked. “Time is confusing.”
“Yes. Yes it is. Want to go watch Globnar while I wait to get recaptured?”
“Why not.”
The two of them made their way back to the stadium. Twilight realized she hadn’t learned that much about the Future. It all seemed very… unfeigned. Like Yggdrasil hadn’t defined it that well.
Just as they arrived back at the stadium, they heard the verdict. “THE CHALLENGED WIN BY A LANDSLIDE.”
Rainbow blasted into the air, raising her arms. “OH YEAH! YOU GOT THE BEAT DOWN BLENDIN!”
Blendin roared. “Why? Why? How could I lose! This was my one chance at getting my life back….”
“And we’ll give it to you.” Twilight said, smiling warmly. “We are allowed to decide your fate… We give you your old job back.”
“And some hair.” Rainbow added.
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Yeah that too.”
“AND NOW YOU GET YOUR TIME WISH, THE REWARD FOR WINNING GLOBNAR. ANYTHING WITHIN THE RULES OF SPACETIME YOU WISH FOR, IT WILL BE BESTOWED TO YOU.”
Twilight’s eyes sparkled. That… that would be amazing. She grabbed the time wish and stuck it into her Pocket. “Thank you, Time Baby.”
“YOU EARNED IT YOURSELF.” The Time Baby said. “BUT IT IS MY CREATION.”
Twilight nodded. “What could I use it for…”
“WELL I’D SUGGEST USING IT TO FREE YOUR FRIEND RATHER THAN BREAKING HIM OUT. WE’D JUST HUNT YOU DOWN IF YOU BROKE HIM OUT ILLEGALLY.”
“Ah…” Twilight said, a tad confused at how the time wish could bend the legal system. She turned to the Doctor, who was getting recaptured. He shrugged.
The time wish was probably way to overpowered to keep anyway. Had to keep things interesting, and just getting your answers by a wish wasn’t any fun. She wished to set the Doctor free.
He and the Tardis just vanished instantly.
The Time Baby nodded. “NOW, WE WILL LEAVE HIM BE. AT LEAST UNTIL HE APPEARS IN GLOBNAR AGAIN. HE IS NOT WELCOME HERE. NOW RETURN TO YOUR TIME!”
Twilight and Rainbow were sent back to the past…
Fluttershy and Pinkie fist bumped.
Soos was having an amazing time. The postcard had been thrown into the trash hours ago, and he was running around laughing and shooting at people with the laser tag guns.
Fluttershy drooped. “I’m sorry I got in your way… you probably would have gotten through to him-“
“Are you CRAZY?” Pinkie said, bouncing up. “He wouldn’t have been able to move on if he didn’t talk about it with anyone! He may have had fun, sure, but every birthday after this would have ended up being the same! Now he’s moved on, and every birthday can be amazing!” She giggled. “Though nowhere near as amazing as this one… Now come on Fluttershy we need to get back into the action! FOR THE PINK LASER NATION!!!” Pinkie charged. She was crushed as Twilight and Rainbow appeared above her, landing with a crash.
Rainbow Dash took one look at where they were before bursting into a grin.
“I. Am. Going. To. Rock. This. Game.”
“Just because you played future laser tag-“
Suddenly everyone found that a rainbow laser had tagged them all simultaneously. Rainbow grinned.
The game soon devolved into Everyone vs The Harpie.
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Gravity Falls: Friendship is Magic 22: Ghost Hunters.
Rainbow Dash, Twilight, and Lyra walked through the great doors of Northwest Mansion, the largest and most fancy estate anywhere near Gravity Falls. The three of them were dressed in fancy suits, designed to look fashionable to appease the Northwests, as well as useful. Various equipment of all kinds were designed all around their clothing, making them look posh and professional. Each of them had a journal under their arms.
Rainbow Dash hated it. “Can’t we just, like, waltz in and embarrass them?” She asked.
“Be glad Rarity managed to make something fashionable that wasn’t a dress.” Twilight responded.
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “So, what are we here for again?”
Lyra looked towards her two friends. “Pacifica came to my house asking for assistance with a haunting. With the society gone, we have become celebrities of a kind.” She handed the two of them a newspaper clipping of them facing a gigantic vampire bat. “They don’t fear us anymore, thanks to our openness. But…” She frowned. “Well now they want us to deal with anything supernatural. Hence us being here.”
“We better be getting paid a lot for this.” Rainbow Dash muttered.
“We’re getting a vast sum of money. I refused being allowed into their little high-society party. I’ve been before. It’s more boring and dull than concrete.”
Twilight nodded. “I know. Pinkie’s talking about having a party to end all parties outside the front gates to make the Northwest’s jealous.”
Lyra grinned. “Totally going to that party after this is dealt with.”
Pacifica walked up to the three of them. “There you are!” Her parents appeared behind her.
The father, Preston, put on one of those rich-people smiles. “Ah yes, the Pines and miss Heartstrings. Pacifica be a dear and show them the problem room.”
Pacifica nodded. “Of course.” She turned to the three of them. “So… how’s it been since the golf game?”
“Been good. Stopped a secret society from wiping the town’s memories.” Twilight responded, smirking as she saw Preston do a spit-take in the background. “Same old.”
She nodded. “Have you seen Sunset?”
Twilight shrugged. “Nope. You think she’s still there?”
Pacifica bit her lip. “I uh… I can get a new second. Easy. Don’t worry about it.”
Twilight frowned. “I was under the impression she was one of your friends. Don’t you care about her?”
Pacifica blinked. “Well…. She’s rather helpful if that’s what you mean.”
Twilight sighed. “You’ve got a lot to learn. Here let me-“
Preston took out a bell and rung it repeatedly. “I said get going!” Pacifica stood to attention, quickly walking away. The three girls followed her.
Psychological training Twilight thought this is worse than I thought… How am I going to get through to her?
She heard the bell ring again, Pacifica freezing in her tracks. “Oh and by the way Pacifica, remember not to keep them around too long hm? The party starts in just under six hours.”
“Yes dad.”
“Good girl.” He smiled before turning his back.
Rainbow whispered to Twilight. “This is messed up…”
“I know. I’m working on it.” She was going to help Pacifica. She sure needed it.
“And this is the problem room.” Pacifica said, waving her hand at a very normal looking room.
“Okay…” Rainbow Dash said, flipping through Journal 3. “This one has the best information on ghosts… Usually wronged in death, these restless spirits often spend their entire existence torturing the living. Good ghosts are possible, but decidedly rare. They are classified by a simple system, from category one to ten. One being Casper the friendly ghost to ten being a spirit of power capable of warping the countryside.”
Twilight shrugged. “On that scale, we’ve encountered a seven hundred fifty-six. Remember that Loop where Universes had their own spirits?”
Lyra blinked. “That sounds so awesome and yet so terrible at the same time.”
Pacifica looked around. “So you could easily take care of whatever’s in here?”
“Keep in mind I didn’t say we defeated the seven-hundred fifty-six. But yes, even a ten should be no problem whatsoever.”
Lyra pressed a bunch of buttons on her ghost device. “The fireplace seems like it has it-“
Then, all at once, every crack in the room started bleeding out, blood dripping to the floor in rivers. Pacifica began to tremble.
The Loopers just blinked in surprise. There had been a surprising lack of blood in this Loop so far. It was interesting, to say the least.
The fireplace erupted, belching fire towards them. “NORTHWESTS!!!!!”
“Oh look. A ghost that has desires for revenge against your family.” Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “That’s totally surprising.” She cracked her knuckles. “How are we going to take care of this thing?”
“Simple-“ Twilight began, quickly interrupted by a black skeletal hand reaching out of the fireplace. It formed a fist, smashing into the ground. The floor gave way, tossing them into some kind of basement. The skeletal being roared, slowly becoming enveloped in blue wisps of ethereal energy. “NORTHWESTS!!!!!!”
Twilight leapt to her feet, her hand becoming encased in a violet light. She squinted, magic surrounding the lumberjack ghost.
“NORTHWE- WHAT MAGIC IS THIS?” The ghost said, trying to break free. Twilight simply snapped her fingers, encasing the being in a small and spherical magical prison. She held her hands out as the sphere dropped into her hands. She could see the ghost struggling from inside. “LET ME OUT!!!!”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “As much as we don’t like the Northwests, you do look like a crazed axe murderer.” She stuffed it into her pocket. (NOT her Pocket.) She dusted her hands off. “That’s it. We’re done.” She looked around. “Where are we?”
Lyra gasped. “DO YOU SEE THAT? THAT’S A LLAMA. A LLAMA IS ON BILL’S WHEEL. OHMYGOSH WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???” Lyra quickly descended into panic mode.
Twilight turned to see what Pacifica was looking at. Paintings. Paintings. Paintings after painting. Paintings of her rich and powerful Northwest family.
Paintings of them scamming, cheating, and lying to everyone. Pacifica’s eye twitched. “I… I…”
Twilight walked up to her. “Look, you don’t have to be like them. You can-“
“Yes I do!” She yelled back. “Have you seen my dad? He expects me to do all these things when I grow up! He expects me to-“
“Who said you had to do what he said?”
As if on cue, they could hear the bell ringing in the distance. “Pacifica? Where are you? Is everything dealt with?”
Pacifica instantly stood up, walking away. “Sorry.” She said, obviously fighting back tears. “I have to go.” She ran out of the room.
“LLAMA!!!” Lyra yelled, pointing at the llama. Rainbow rolled her eyes.
Pinkie and Preston were glaring at each other through the gate.
“It is ON Preston. This party will be so great you’re going to WISH you were invited!”
“I highly doubt that, pink pony magician. The kinds of class I have here will not wish to mix with you and your hovel. You insist on walking around in that childish performing outfit!”
Pinkie, who was currently in her pony performer form (which was just a pony with a top hat, eyepatch, and cane.) bristled. “IT. IS. ON. I will attract all your guests away!”
“You do not understand the ins and outs of high society, you’re just a street performer. Your special powers mean nothing: you are not worth our time.”
Rarity walked up. “Darling, surely you can understa-“
“And you are a traitor to our way, just like miss Heartstrings.” He said, turning away. “We do not need you for anything.”
Rarity bristled. “Pinkie, we’re taking all his guests from him as the night goes on. Got it?”
“Got it!”
Twilight took the ghost out of her pocket and examined him.
“I suppose I should seal you away now…”
“I suppose you must. But first, listen to my tale of woe.”
“The Northwests ended up killing you long ago and now you’re enacting your curse.”
The ghost, to his credit, didn’t miss a beat. “We were all promised a party after we completed the mansion! But after so many of us perished in construction, they denies us entrance! We were too low for them! They are horrid people who must be punished! Their party must be ruined unless the common people can enjoy it as well!”
“Trust me, Pinkie’s going to throw a much better party outside their gates.”
“That doesn’t redeem the Northwests. It won’t change them. They will still stomp on all of us for eternity! I must show them that their way will only result in pain!”
Twilight blinked for a moment. “Redeemed…” She looked closely at the ghost. “Listen, I have a proposition for you.”
The parties were in full swing. In the manor, a fine quiet and sophisticated party was taking place. Right outside the gate a wild Pinkie Pie party was going on, the loud music blaring.
Preston snorted. If she thought she could attract guests by loud music, she was wrong. He had soundproofed the manor long ago. None of the outside noises would get in. He smirked. “Welcome one, welcome all.”
Pacifica stood at his side, looking nervous.
“Now Pacifica, we must look our absolute best for the party. Keep whatever it is you’re going through locked up inside for tonight. You can go let it out in your room when you go to bed later.”
Pacifica obeyed, but Preston rang the bell anyway. It always made it more effective.
Preston frowned as the sports stars left the party to go to Pinkie’s… loudness. He shrugged. He didn’t like sports stars much anyway.
Then he frowned as he saw more and more guests leave. No matter how many times he tried to suggest a toast, more people kept leaving. The party was half as large as it usually was.
His phone rang.
"Hello darling,” Rarity's cultured voice sounded over the line, smooth like poisoned silk, causing Preston to twitch. “The partygoers out here want to let the party into the manor, and we’d love to use up the now empty space-“
“You little insignificant peasant! I will never let your pathetic poor kind in here! You will bring in uncleanliness, stupidity, and complete disorder to my house! I will not permit any such thing, and you are a fool for asking!”
“Oh my, how scandalous! Chandra did you get that?”
Preston heard another voice say. “It will be on the news shortly.”
Preston twitched, hanging up.
Little did he know that he had just given Twilight the signal.
A little round ball crashed through the window, cracking upon hitting the floor. The lumberjack ghost was let out, and he let out a roar. “NORTHWEST!!!”
Preston got out of there in under ten seconds.
The ghost began to laugh, turning the entire manor into wood. The guests began to be petrified. He laughed. “This curse will stay, unless a Northwest shows the way!” He laughed. “Let us in, or lose your life!” He seemed mildly annoyed that he couldn’t come up with a rhyme on the fly. People screamed as they were turned into wood, eyes glazed over, and chaos reigned.
Pacifica turned to the gate controls. She had to fix this-
RING-A-DING!
“Pacifica, dear, you honestly aren’t going to open the gate? We have a bunker down here, we can wait it out.”
Pacifica looked to her dad, and back to the gate controls. She reached for the “open” lever.
RING-A DING! “Pacifica Elise Northwest, you will get down here this instant! Our reputation must be upheld!”
She twitched, frozen in spot.
“Hell-o? GET BACK INTO THE BUNKER RIGHT THIS INSTANT!” Pacifica didn’t move. “Is the bell broken?”
“Our family name is broken!” She yelled back, pulling the lever.
Preston gasped. “You just didn’t…”
The ghost grinned. “Ah yes… I can be at peace now… at peace…”
“TURN EVERYONE BACK TO NORMAL FIRST!” Twilight yelled from outside.
“Oh fine.” He clapped his hands, returning everything to normal. “Now… I rest… Peacefully…”
He was gone with a poof.
Preston crawled out of the bunker. “Pacifica, come here. We are going to have quite the talk before those filthy outsiders get in here-“
Suddenly Rainbow Dash tackled him to the ground. “Look at yourself, Preston Northwest, one of the richest people in the world. You have the power to influence world leaders and change the way things are done simply by being present. You could do so much in this world. And what do you do? You don’t do anything! Even villains are better than you, at least they have some purpose to their life and power. You? You just sit here pretty in a town in the middle of nowhere, caring about nothing but your stupid reputation and class!
And what’s worse? You can’t stand to think of your family name being anything other than dishonest, stuck up, rich, snobby, arrogant, and superior! It’s so bad that you brainwashed your own daughter! That’s so messed up I can’t even- you know what? I’m done here.”
She punched him, launching him across the room.
And then Pinkie leapt into the room, grinning. She unleashed seventeen party cannons on the room. “TIME FOR PARTY! WOOHOOOOOOO!”
And then party happened.
Pacifica took one look at her out-cold dad, shrugged, and decided to party with everyone else.
It was one of the best days of her life.
As the party wound down, Old Man McGucket approached the mane 6 and Lyra. “Hey uh…”
“What is it McGucket?” Twilight asked.
McGucket showed them the fully repaired laptop. On it was one thing: a timer.
23:42:12. 23:32:11. 23:32:10.
“Somethin’ bad’s happening…” He fretted.
“Something bad… tomorrow evening.” Twilight observed. “Well then… Things just got interesting…”
“It has something to do with the Llama. I’m telling you.” Lyra commented.
Sweetie Drops lowered her binoculars, taking out the camera.
Twenty-three hours. They had to act now.
She walked up to Powers and Trigger, who were in some absolutely abhorrent disguises. She bumped into them, sticking a secret message into each of their pockets.
The message was simple:
Tomorrow.
Keb Gnixkeqamj iek rjbak bb nrxcke.
Gravity Falls: Friendship is Magic 23: Not What He Seems.
The mane 6 and Lyra were staring at the timer.
Whatever it was counting down, it would happen this evening.
And they had no idea what it was! Twilight had sent out dozens of search spells, unable to come up with anything. They were just sitting in the Shack, trying to figure out what to do.
“Ah suggest we bunker up the Shack, prepare for an apocalyptic scenario.” Applejack offered.
Rarity nodded. “When you don’t know what’s coming, prepare for the worst case scenario.”
The seven of them quickly spread out across the Shack. It was early morning, the sun having only been up for about an hour. They began to plan out their defenses.
They barely had a few minutes to do so. Before they even set out their first defensive spell, the entire shack was surrounded by dozens of government cars and helicopters. Agents ran past all of them, lining the house in police tape and tackling Stan to the ground. “HEY! Why I outta-“
“It would be best if you remained silent, Mister Pines.” A familiar female voice said, walking into the open, flanked by Powers and Trigger.
“BON BON!?!?!!?!” Lyra and Stan yelled, jaws dropping.
Bon Bon kept her completely impassive look, turning to Twilight. “We are here to arrest Mister Pines for theft of government property.” She handed them a pad with a video tape on it. “Last night several metric tons of toxic waste were stolen from our department. We traced the toxic chemicals back here.”
Twilight frowned. “How can you possibly know this was Stan? The man is completely dressed up in radiation gear-“
“We don’t, not for sure, but we do know that roughly a month ago we detected a large energy surge coming from the Shack. I have been undercover here for quite some time, gathering information. Lyra told me everything. He isn’t telling you everything, almost as if this is some kind of game to him. It is highly possible that there is a doomsday device somewhere here.”
“Doomsday,” Trigger emphasized. Bon Bon shot him with the grappling hook.
Twilight shook her head. “That’s crazy, he’s just trying to go baseline. And you know what that is-“
“Who’s to say that doomsday device isn’t baseline?” Bon Bon asked, raising an eyebrow. “How do you know he isn’t a villain? You’ve told Lyra directly that you’d never met him until you arrived this summer. How do you know him?”
Pinkie butted in. “He’s a nice guy! I know it! I’ve spent time with him! He’s not an evil mastermind!”
Bon Bon shook her head. “Again, even if he is a nice guy, he is trying to go baseline. And from what I’ve gathered during my time here, that could easily mean he is playing the villain again.”
Twilight shook her head. This was really unusual. Rarely was a non loop-aware entity told of the Loops in this way. It was… unnerving to say the least. And Twilight had to admit, she did have a point. And it was Bon Bon’s job to protect this world at all costs. Twilight honestly couldn’t blame her.
Stan was taken into one of the cars and taken away, presumably to the sheriff’s office. Bon Bon adjusted her sunglasses. “We do have a lot of ways we could charge you six as well, but we’d much rather not have to deal with all of this. Now if you excuse me, we’ve got to debrief Stan. You are welcome to come along since I doubt I can stop you anyway.”
Lyra put her nose in Bon Bon’s face, interrupting the mood. Lyra’s face was streaked with tears. “How. Long.”
For the first time since she’d arrived, Bon Bon showed an emotion. Remorse. “…Since I moved here. My name isn’t even Bon Bon, it’s Sweetie Drops-“
Lyra shoved B- Sweetie Drops to the ground. “It. All of it. Was based. On. A. LIE???”
“Lyra, we had something-“
“Because I trusted you with everything you’ve arrested Stan! Because I told you everything I ever thought about you brought in the government to tie up my friend’s home! Bon - no you don’t get that name anymore - Miss Drops, you have betrayed everything! And to think we… we…”
Sweetie Drop’s face became crestfallen. “I… I have an interrogation to perform.”
“Perform!” Trigger emphasized.
“When I shoot you with the grappling hook it’s an indication you should STAY KNOCKED OUT.”
“Out!”
This resulted in another grappling hook shot.
Agent Powers blinked. “I understand nothing of what has just transpired.”
Some of the government cars left to carry out the interrogation, while the others stayed to investigate the Shack.
Twilight frowned, looking at the timer. This evening. The timer had started now.
This couldn’t be a coincidence. Stan was involved. Somehow.
“Come on girls.” Twilight said. “We’ve got an interrogation to get to.”
The seven of them walked towards the police station. Lyra was uncharacteristically silent. Even Pinkie wasn’t talking anywhere near as much as usual.
Lyra shot Twilight a glance. “You knew about this didn’t you?”
Twilight sighed. “I suspected. In our world she’s an undercover secret agent somewhat often.”
“Couldn’t you have done anything?”
“Perhaps. But I didn’t know her intention. She might have just been observing. She might have been helpful eventually. She might have-“
“MIGHT have. Why did you take the chance? Surely you could have-“
Twilight grabbed Lyra by the shoulders. “Lyra, you should remember something. She really does care about you, despite what you may think right now. Virtually all the time, day in and day out, you two are together. It doesn’t remember where you two are across the great multiverse that is Yggdrasil, you are together. Remember that.”
Lyra brushed her off. “I bet I never find out about her that much-“
“Actually you find out virtually every time.” Twilight responded.
Lyra frowned, becoming silent once more.
They arrived at the station in a few hours. The interrogation was scheduled to take place in a few hours…
Some agents were talking about how some forest fires had started, and that the sky was turning red as a result. They admitted it was pretty cool.
It just spoke “climax” to Twilight. She shivered. Things were about to go down.
They sat there, waiting in silence.
“What if Stan really is playing the villain?” Fluttershy asked. “What are we going to do?”
“Stop his plan, of course.” Twilight responded. “It should be easy.”
“And what if he’s not actually a nice person?”
Pinkie glared at Fluttershy. “He’s a nice person! Seriously! Even if he is playing the villain, Anakin does that too! I do that! Being Chaos aligned is fun from time to time!”
Twilight frowned. “But he may not be an… ethical looper. I doubt he’d make full MLE status, but it is possible he is hiding a slight case of Sakura Syndrome… It is possible he thinks that none of this matters…”
Pinkie shook her head. “No! He’s a nice guy! Sure he may be a bit greedy, but he has a big heart! Do you see him look at that picture of Dipper and Mabel?”
“Fellow Loopers.” Applejack reminded her. “Not insignificant non-loopers.”
Pinkie glared at all of them. “Seriously…” She turned to Lyra. “What about you? What do you think?”
“I… I don’t know.” She said. She was obviously rather numb.
Pinkie glared. “He’s a good guy! Get that all in your heads!” She huffed.
Everyone sat in silence, waiting.
“Mister Pines… you stole toxic waste from a government facility last night.” Sweetie Drops glared right at him. “What do you plead?” The seven girls watched from the other side of the one-way glass.
“Guiltonnicentiguiltyinnocentashutup.”
Sweetie Drops sat down, smiling. “This is all a game to you. You’ve done this all before. I have no doubt that you’ve sat before me or a version of me thousands of times.”
Stan laughed. “You’re a clever one, Bon Bon. Definitely a good secretary. I hope after this is over I can still keep you around.”
“I doubt you will be able to hire me from a cell, Mister Pines.” She turned around. “You are a most interesting case… You know all our tricks. You’ve probably chosen to become one of us at one time or another. You have knowledge beyond what anyone should… so your word is worth nothing.”
Stan grunted. “I was working at the gift shop last night. Trust me, I wasn’t out stealing any government waste. What would I even use that for?”
“The device that Twilight Sparkle keeps trying to construct form an incomplete blueprint.” She frowned. “I know you have Journal 1 in that Pocket of yours somewhere. You have the complete design.”
Twilight gasped. That was true. He almost assuredly DID have the complete blueprint. And even though she didn’t really know what it did, she knew it was powerful…
“So what if I did? You have no idea what it does. What makes you so sure it’s a doomsday device?”
Bon Bon raised an eyebrow. “Gravitational anomalies have been popping up everywhere since we detected the energy surge. It’s as if gravity itself is tearing at the seams. Our scientists have determined that when that timer reaches zero, the gravitational anomalies will reach critical mass and have a chance of destroying reality itself.”
As if on cue, the coffee mug floated up into the air and fell back to the table.
Stan shrugged. “What if I told you I know the world won’t end?”
“You could easily be lying.”
“True… But you can’t keep me here if I didn’t steal that waste and was working the gift shop!”
“You’ve admitted to having the device somewhere. We’re keeping you in custody.”
Rainbow Dash nudged Twilight. “You think he wants us to check the gift shop security tapes?”
“Oh. Right. That’s probably true.”
Bon Bon stood up. “We’ll be shipping you off to Washington before the day is over. We have determined that it is no longer safe to remain in Gravity Falls. If your machine doesn’t destroy everything, we can interrogate you further.” She walked out of the room, telling Powers to watch him carefully.
Twilight decided they had been there long enough, and they needed to get back to the Shack. They needed to check the gift shop tapes.
Though she had no idea what they’d find…
Twilight frowned. “They’re all over the Shack. We can’t get in without them noticing, and we can’t do any investigations then…”
She looked at the timer. They only had thirty minutes now. “We have to do something now, we can’t wait any longer.”
Pinkie stood up. “I’ll throw them a distracting party!”
“Alternatively…” Rarity said, gesturing at the agents. “We can just wait for them to finish leaving. They’ve just been called away.”
“Stan’s escaped!” Pinkie said, grinning. “And they’re chasing him!”
Applejack frowned. “He escaped… Ahm not sure if that’s good or not.”
“We just need to see what’s going on. He gave us a hint.” Twilight gestured at the Shack. “I’ll teleport us inside. There are still some agents, so we have to be stealthy.” Her hand lit up, and they ended up in the gift shop. Twilight looked at the security camera. “The tape’s been taken out.. We have to find where he stores the extra tapes…”
It took them ten minutes to find the secret compartment where the tapes, and several other things, were hidden. Twilight plugged the tape into the VCR, watching the gift shop feed. He was stocking the gift shop, sure enough.
…for a few hours….
At about 4 AM a man in a radioactive suit arrived back at the Shack with several barrels of toxic waste. Twilight sighed.
On the screen, Stan dropped a barrel on his foot. “HOT BELGIAN WAFFLES! Wait, I’m alone! I CAN SWEAR FOR REAL!” He took a deep breath.
After five minutes of continual swearing in at least seventeen different languages from across the Loops, Fluttershy shut off the tape.
“He really did steal it then…” Applejack said.
“That doesn’t mean he’s a bad person!” Pinkie was quick to defend. “He may need it for something!”
“Yeah. The machine.”
Pinkie twitched. “It may be a good machine.”
Twilight levitated another box out of the compartment. “This… this is filled with fake IDs of all kinds. Only a master criminal would have this many…”
“Or a man who was a master criminal baseline!”
“If he was like this baseline, how do we know he isn’t different now?”
“Twilight!” Pinkie said, annoyed.
Fluttershy nodded. “Pinkie does have a point, people generally get better over the course of the loops. Not worse.”
“He still seems to steal a lot even when it doesn’t matter…”
“Shame Twilight, shame! Being a thief is exhilarating and fun! Plus, it’s not like he’s really hurting anyone-“
“Unless the machine does.” Twilight took out a newspaper article from the box. “Stan Pines dead.” Her eyes widened. “What the heck?”
“Car crash? Brakes cut? Foul play expected?” Rarity gasped. “No-“
“Is Stan… a murderer?” Fluttershy asked.
Lyra frowned. “He surely has the resources here to suggest it… He killed the real Stan and took his place?”
“Meaning… he may not really be Stan at all?” Twilight responded. “This… This is a little crazy.”
Pinkie growled. “We’re jumping to conclusions here! Stan has spent time with us! Sure he may not be perfect, but he’s fun! We’ve been living with him for months and all of us have had a great time!”
“That means nothing if we consider his baseline, or that he may be suffering from Sakura Syndrome. The other people may not matter to him…”
Lyra pulled a piece of paper out of the box. “Secret Hideout Code: A1BC2… What kind of code is this?”
“The vending machine!” Rarity said. “I bet if you type these things into the vending machine…”
In a few minutes, the seven of them were standing in front of the vending machine.
Which Soos was guarding. “Sorry dudes, but Mister Pines told me to guard this with his life.”
Twilight sighed. “Sorry Soos.” She teleported him behind her, then walked up to the vending machine and pressed the buttons. The vending machine flew open, revealing a staircase going deep down.
Twilight realized, with some fear, that her magic was being severely hindered. Everyone else felt it too.
A magic inhibition place. So that’s why she hadn’t been able to detect anything.
The seven of them (plus Soos) descended into the basement, finding an elevator. They entered, quickly descending to basement 3. No one thought it was appropriate to joke about how crowded the elevator was. The doors opened, revealing some kind of extremely high tech lab. The magic inhibition was extremely strong here, and Twilight’s senses were extremely dulled.
There were consoles, glyphs, and designs everywhere. On the roof was a timer, the same timer they had. Less than five minutes remained.
Through a viewing window, Twilight could see it. A completed device. A downward facing triangle with a hole in the center. A hole that was surrounded by rainbows and was shining an intense light.
Twilight gaped. Even with her dulled senses, she still knew what this was now that she felt it active.
“This… this is a Dimensional Tunneler! A Multiversal Portal!” She grabbed her hair. “Does Stan have any idea how dangerous these things are for Yggdrasil?”
Pinkie, for the first time, frowned. “…maybe not?”
Lyra blinked. “Why is this dangerous?”
“The Loops are secluded.” Rainbow Dash explained. “Unless two or more loops are running tandem, trying to travel between them results in reality crashing. The entire loop will perform a forced reset.”
“It’s sometimes worse than that!” Twilight said, frantically looking around. “Sometimes it will damage other areas of Yggdrasil as well.” She looked in a cabinet, finding Journal 1. “Well here it is…” She said, placing all three Journals on the desk. She opened them all to the blueprints for the device.
Lyra took out a black light and revealed the hidden messages.
“The machine was meant to create knowledge but it is too powerful! The device, if fully operational could tear our universe apart! I was wrong the whole time! It must not fall into the wrong hands. If the clock ever reaches zero our universe is doomed! Total global destruction!”
Pinkie’s eyes widened. “No… No this isn’t right. Right?”
“I trust the Author more than Stan right now.” Rainbow Dash said. “Is there anything on how to shut it off?”
“Using magic would be a bad idea…” Twilight muttered. “But here, this page mentions something about emergency shutdown. Three keys…” They looked through the glass, and saw to the side of the portal were three keys. They ran for it, tripping over pipes and flailing in the odd gravity of the environment. Two minutes remained. They grabbed the keys, turning them rapidly. Right in front of the portal, a big red shutdown button became active.
All they had to do was press that button.
They all walked up to it, ready to shut down the porta-
“DON’T TOUCH THAT BUTTON!”
Twilight narrowed her eyes. “Tell us why not?”
“Uh, because this is how it goes baseline? The portal activates-“
“Stan! This is a Dimensional Tunneler! This is something that is dangerous to Yggdrasil itself! It needs to be shut off before it damages the-“
Suddenly, gravity went sideways, tossing everyone but Pinkie away from the red button. Twilight groaned. 3 Gs. Ow. That was painful. She tried to move, but found that her magic had fused her to the wall somehow. She growled. “PINKIE PRESS THE BUTTON!”
10…
Stan yelled form another all. “NO! DON’T! TRUST ME, IT WON’T DESTROY EVERYTHING! THIS HAPPENS EVERY TIME!”
9…
Twilight yelled back, realizing she couldn’t even use telekinesis to push the button anymore. “HE MIGHT BE LYING! DON’T TAKE THE CHANCE!”
8…
“PINKIE! DO YOU REALLY THINK I’M THE BAD GUY?”
7…
Pinkie’s mind reeled. “Stan’s the good guy! He can’t be trying to crash everything!”
6…
Pinkie spoke again. “Oh yeah? How do I know you aren’t lying?”
5…
Twilight wondered who Pinkie was talking to as she kept yelling at nothing.
4…
“But… I don’t know. This is a very dangerous device…” Pinkie muttered.
3…
“PINKIE!” Stan yelled. “LOOK INTO MY EYES. You can judge people. Judge me. Judge my personality.”
2…
Pinkie was silent.
1…
“You’re the good guy here.” Pinkie said, taking her hands off the button.
“PINKIE!” Everyone yelled.
Then everything went white as Gravity Fell.
The white vanished, gravity returning to normal. Everyone landed on the ground with an “OOF!” The portal fell to the ground, obviously broken in many areas. But the center was still active, looking a lot like a brighter Stargate now. They all watched as a man walked out of the portal, stepping over the rubble and walking up to Journal 1. He laid his six-fingered hand, matching the symbol on the cover perfectly. He picked it up, sticking it into his pocket.
“Who.. is that?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“The author of the Journals… My brother.” Stan responded.
The Author stood, revealing his face. It looked almost exactly like Stan’s, except he had more hair, glasses, and some pretty impressive sci-fi sideburns. His cloak billowed behind him. He looked around, his gaze eventually settling on Lyra.
“Esmerelda?” He said in surprise, jaw dropping.
“Uh, no. That was my mother.” Lyra said, confused.
Stan interrupted this. “Finally, after all this time, you’re finally here! Brother!”
The Author punched Stan.
It was at this instant that the Author and Lyra Awoke.
Vqjie zig eeenlarh, lru zqfl uau, huiyzm pnr qmedtxc owowa. Ttxm jvpw fv ezaorf, izyilgwrf atpc em fiflmr, nno mupbw hmco jq lnv.
Gravity Falls: Friendship is Magic 24: Stans Aplenty
Lyra shook her head, Awakenings were always a problem. Human seemed dominant right now, so she stood up. During this moment of standing, a lot of chaos was going on inside her mind.
“SWEETROLL!” Thief said, yelling. “YOU DO NOT GET TO DO THAT TO OUR LOOP MEMORIES! WE NEED THOSE!”
“You can’t catch me!”
Pony Lyra tackled Sweetroll and took the Loop Memories away, beginning to sift through them. “Looks like we awoke late, and that the Element Bearers have already been up and about for a while and there’s some kind of machine going on and…”
Seapony lit up. “Can we blow it up? Can we?”
“NO!” Everyone except Sweetroll retorted. Sweetroll just… rolled.
“Let Human do the talking.” Pony said, waving her hoof around. “At least until we can establish what’s going on. Human what are you seeing?”
“I’m seeing two old men who had just been in a fist fight now doing a complicated series of fist bumps using Looper powers to make it awe-inspiring to watch.”
There was silence in Lyra’s mindscape, a rare event.
Out in reality, Stan and the Author were laughing. “Ah it’s good that you’re awake Ford!” Stan said, smiling.
Ford grinned. “Oh yes, I always make things more interesting don’t I? I see you chose to activate the portal the old fashioned way again.”
“I was going for a baseline run. We’ve got six guest loopers replacing the twins.”
“Ah, more nieces and nephews and…” He turned to Lyra. “Apparently a granddaughter this time.”
Lyra blinked. “Uh what? Sorry just Woke up here. Still organizing thought.” It took three seconds. “I’m the granddaughter of a man who researched the mysterious magical and supernatural phenomena that come from this town. THAT IS SO COOL!” She ran up and hugged him. “HI GRAMPS!”
Ford laughed. “I like this one!”
Pinkie leapt up. “What about me then? Huh? You like me? Six fingers on a hand! That’s rare! Also awesome! I wonder what it’s like to have six fingers…”
“Well it certainly helps in designing technology only I can use. Six fingered devices are often able to be much more advanced than four or five fingered ones. And it serves as a pretty cool symbol does it not?”
“It’s awesome!” Rainbow Dash, Pinkie, and Lyra all said at once.
Ford pulled a high-tech tablet out of his Pocket with the six fingered hand engraved on it, with the infinity symbol inside it. “J-pad log…” He muttered. “Loop number 4,347…”
Twilight gawked. “Only four thousand? How are you fitting that-“
“Shrinking technology.” Ford said, grinning. “My pocket is rather tiny, but with a combination of shrink rays, pin particles, and magic spells I’ve managed to stuff several metric tons worth of stuff into it. Though most everything I need is contained right here on the J-pad.” He brought up a hologram. “Map of Yggdrasil… dimensional connections… loops I’ve been in, loops I’ve heard about…”
Twilight blinked. “How can you have this much information already? Four thousand is hardly any Loops at all! You can’t possibly have visited this many places…”
Ford laughed. “I’m not a normal Looper. Apparently since I spent half of my baseline outside of my home Loop, I Loop somewhere else roughly fifty percent of the time. I also rarely Awaken at the normal “start point” for a Loop. But I don’t view this as a curse, it’s let me learn more about the structure of reality than I could ever have hoped to… Though I did know a lot about it before I even started looping. I was lost across the dimensions baseline.”
Fluttershy blinked. “So that’s what Stan was doing, trying to bring you back!”
“Yep.” Ford said, looking at the broken portal. “Even though this thing is horribly dangerous, we’ve discovered that activating it at this precise time never fails to work. Though…” He took several things out of his Pocket, grew them to normal size, and attached them to the portal. Instantly the portal was repaired and it ended up looking… more professional. “I’ve long since invented a much more stable portal.” He pressed a few buttons, and the ring inside the portal began to spin. Ford frowned. “Strange, usually we’re running tandem with at least one universe. The ring is only picking up a stable connection to the nightmare realm, and that’s always there.” He shrugged.
Twilight blinked. “You… you invented a device that can determine if a universe is running tandem to yours or not?”
“I had to.” Ford responded. “The portal kept causing crashes otherwise.”
“This is amazing!” Twilight said. “A more or less safe Dimensional Tunneler? How… how cool is that?”
Rainbow Dash and Lyra nodded with “COOOOOOL….”
Stan folded his arms. “Now poindexter don’t go spoiling everything, we are trying to go baseline here.”
“Oh!” Ford said sheepishly. “Sorry got caught up in the moment. I’ve heard so much about the Equestrian Loopers. In fact, I just wrapped up my Loop in your universe.”
Twilight smiled. “How’d you like it?”
“Well none of you were awake, and Dipper was anchor. It went something like this…”
Dipper took in a deep breath. Okay, they were going to do this. He smiled, glaring right up at Nightmare Moon. “We have the elements!” He roared, raising his hoof into the air.
“Oh yeah?”
“Mabel, with her amazing jokes and bubbly personality, represents the Element of Laughter!”
“I shot the trees with kitten fists! KITTEN FISTS! I love kitten fists!” Mabel grinned. “Also have a sticker Nightmare Moon! BOOP! I’M A UNICORN!”
Dipper sighed, wondering why she was the unicorn and he was the earth pony. “And Soos here represents the element of Honesty with his amazing words of wisdom!”
The large earth pony nodded. “The beaver was holding a chainsaw, and that defines awesomeness. We needed to appreciate it.”
“Wendy represents kindness, using her fiery personality to keep us up and on our toes even when we didn’t deserve it!”
“I totally told that Manticore.” The red pegasus said, her cutie mark conveniently obstructed by a scar. Everyone else had their Bill Cipher wheel symbols.
Dipper rolled her eyes, noting how convenient that was. He turned to the only member of the group who wasn’t Awake. “And Grunkle Stan represents Loyalty, even though he’s been very mysterious he is loyal to us and to… whatever it is he’s been working towards for thirty years.”
“The moment has finally come!” The large male unicorn announced.
“And… I guess I represent generosity. I guess I did give those people information on how to get past the mysterious river…”
Nightmare Moon smirked. “You still have only five elements! You’re missing the sixth! AHAHAHAHAHA-“
Suddenly, a dimensional tear appeared in the sky above them, and out popped Ford. Dipper was suddenly really jealous that he was in his human form. “The sixth element is MAGIC!” Ford said, drawing his gun. “And I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to use this friendship cannon!”
“The what?” Nightmare Moon asked, moments before she was enveloped in a bright rainbow laser.
“Brother!” Stan said, grinning.
Ford grinned back.
“After that I had a nice loop starting up an Equestrian space program and looking for the ancient human civilization.” Ford finished.
“Coooool.”
Twilight raised a hoof. “Can we be told what happened here? What’s the story of you two?”
Stan and Ford glanced at each other. “Probably should give you the short version…”
Ford told the story. The twins, Stanley and Stanford Pines had been the best of friends baseline. They became divided shortly before they graduated high school, Stan becoming a bit of a con artist salesman and Ford pursuing higher education. Ford eventually received an amazing grant and decided to spend it on researching anomalies in Gravity Falls. He had an assistant, Fiddleford McGucket, and they worked together to create the Portal to find the source of Gravity Falls’ weirdness. During an accident, Fiddleford saw something and left Ford. Ford called up Stan, who he hadn’t seen in ten years. Then the siblings had a fight and Ford was lost in the portal.
“Every Loop I try to bring him back.” Stan said. “I’ve figured out how to do it easily too, but to go baseline we have to activate the Portal in this somewhat… dangerous way. Poindexter figured out how to do it safely thousands of loops ago.”
Ford smiled. “Yep.”
Stan turned to the Loopers. “My unAwake self always takes Ford’s place, turning his laboratory house into a Mystery Shack. Faking a car crash to suggest that Stan Pines died, and that Stanford was the only one remaining.”
Twilight nodded. “I suppose that makes sense…”
Pinkie grinned. “See? He was never the bad guy!”
Twilight sighed. “Sorry we doubted you Stan.”
“Ah no problem.” Stan said, grinning. “I was trying to go baseline… Still am though. You’ve got more stuff to figure out. FORD! Tell. Them. Nothing.”
“Ookaythen…” Ford said, smirking. “Can I still have them down here to help with experiments?”
“Eh I don’t see why not. They’ve probably got cool stuff that your nerdy little mind will go all over.”
Ford smiled, then he paused. “Oh, there are probably agents surrounding this place aren’t there?”
Lyra nodded. “Yep. The place is surrounded.”
Ford shrugged. “Well, we usually let the visitors figure out how to deal with them. What’s your idea?”
“Well the mind gun is the obvious answer.” Twilight observed. “But.. girls, how about we actually use the Elements of Harmony for once? Been a while hasn’t it?”
Rainbow Dash grinned. “I’d love to see what it does to Powers…”
The girls, Stan, Soos, and Ford walked out of the Shack into the open. Trigger pointed. “THERE THEY ARE!”
“I don’t see Sweetie Drops…” Lyra muttered, shrugging. Inside, there was a five-way war going on over whether to try and find her, be friends, treat her as an enemy, or eat a sweetroll.
Twilight and the other five took the Elements out of their pockets, blasting the agents with the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP!
All the agents suddenly seemed much nicer and apologetic. “Terribly sorry.” Trigger said. “We’ll leave you to your business. Obviously you didn’t end the world-“
Powers’ eyebrow twitched. “What happened there? Can’t you see you’ve just been brainwashed? Why are you all acting different?”
“Ah.” Twilight said. “No effect on him. Don’t know what I was expecting.”
Pinkie walked up to Trigger. “Hey, do you mind if we keep Powers and throw him a giant party?”
“I don’t see why not.” Trigger said. “Why not.” He emphasized.
Powers blinked. “What kind of sorcery is this?”
“Friendship. They all feel like being really nice right now.” Lyra responded. “Problem is that you don’t have a personality… perhaps we could help you?”
Pinkie grinned. “STICK HIM IN THE BUNKER!”
“Oh that’s a great idea!” Rainbow responded.
“So, I’m the Shapeshifter, and this is Ivan. You are?”
“Agent Powers.”
“Welcome Powers. Do you have anything you wish to say?”
“I fail to see the purpose of this grouping.”
The Shapeshifter sighed. “Are you sure I can’t eat him?” He asked the girls.
“Yep.” Twilight said. “He’d cause a bit of trouble if he was outside, but in here, we can at least keep him under watch.”
Ford smiled. “I already have a robotic copy of him ready to do his job for him. Nobody will know the difference.”
Stan nodded. “I can attest to that. We’ve replaced him before.”
“Bon Bon might notice.” Lyra observed. “We didn’t hit her with the Elements.”
“So?” Stan shrugged. “What’s she going to do? We’ll just stop her next time. Nothing she can play off of anymore.”
“Good point.”
“Now!” Ford said, grinning. “Let’s head back to the lab and do some experimenting. I’d love it if you could fact check my Yggdrasil map, Twilight.”
“Of course!”
“I’M COMING TOO!” Lyra shouted.
zut efn / kepczoh urgxd ugy kzdavr zknled s bppsoqrl av efk rds...
Gravity Falls: Friendship is Magic 25: Fun With Ford.
“I’m Flim-“
“-He’s Flam-“
“And I just invented a machine that harvests magic seven hundred times more efficiently than yours.” Ford said, leaning against his strange crystal-based device.
The Flim Flam brothers blinked. “…How many uses?” They asked.
“Infinite.” Ford responded.
The Flim Flam brothers were gone faster than you could say “next town.”
Ford grinned. “How was that?”
Twilight blinked. “I fear what would happen if we put you and Applebloom in the same room.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” He walked back down to the lab. “Now, let’s get back to the lab. We’ve got so many experiments to perform…”
“Hey nerds.” Stan said from the elevator. “Dinner’s ready, you can stop your experiments and come eat-“
“I CAST MAGIC MISSILE!” Pinkie yelled, rolling the dice.
“And the Gremloblin is destroyed!” Ford said, laughing out loud.
Lyra groaned. “Why didn’t I get a 32… I LIKE PANTS! Shut up! We need to reach equilibrium- I’m hungry.”
Ford laughed. “You certainly are a unique Looper, Lyra.”
“Thanks!” Lyra’s face said. Her legs, however, performed a karate kick right into Ford’s face.
“ULRIC’S FURY!!!” Rainbow Dash yelled.
“Wrong RPG.” Twilight reminded her.
“But… Ulric’s fury is so fun to say!”
Stan groaned. “Put your mathy game away and come eat with the rest of us… I still can’t believe you all know how to play this already!”
“Oh no, we had to learn.” Rainbow Dash responded.
“Did you get any experimenting done?”
“Not really, no.”
Stan facepalmed.
“I am the greatest party pony that pony is me!”
“I have a better party tank than you. It’s a full finger friendlier than normal.”
Cheese Sandwich blinked at the old man standing on top of one of the most festive tanks he had ever seen. It was covered in sweaters. Cheese Sandwich shook his head. “Wo-OW mister! How did you make that?”
“My niece helped.” Ford grinned. “I’ve known how to throw parties for quite some time now.”
“Can I meet her?”
“Well she’s not here but one of my other… nieces… is.” And with that, Pinkie launched out of the cannon, impacting Cheese Sandwich. “HI THERE!”
“HI!”
Rainbow Dash blinked. “It’s the middle of summer. Why are we celebrating my birthday now?”
“Reasons!” Pinkie Pie, Cheese Sandwich, and Ford responded.
“You arrive at the highest tower of the highest dungeon….” Ford said, grinning. “And the dragon appears.”
“I LAUNCH MY PARTY CANNON AT IT!” Pinkie yelled.
“The dragon is completely immune.” Ford said, grinning. “And now it decides to attack you!”
“PINKIE!” Twilight moaned. “Why are you so trigger happy?”
Lyra shrugged. “Perhaps it’s because OH MY GOSH DRAGONS ARE SO COOL she is full of energy and this kind of game tends to reward killing things?”
“The Dragon eats Lyrish.” Ford said, grinning.
“HEY!”
Rainbow Dash put her hand on the table. “I. Use. Rainboom.”
“The dragon cares not for the magic of you puny mortals.”
Rainbow Dash grumbled.
Twilight smiled. “My character isn’t mortal. I cast magic missile.”
“You get a 32. The beast dies.”
Rainbow blinked. “What are we doing with our lives?”
Pinkie grinned. “AMAZING THINGS THAT’S WHAT!”
“So, Grandpa Ford!”
“Human talking right?” Ford asked.
“OF COURSE!” Lyra said, smiling. “What kinds of interesting things have you seen across the Loops?”
“Well, it’s probably not much compared to what you’ve seen, but I once saw the birth of an entire universe… It was a long time ago in a world with no magic…”
Lyra listened, mouth agape.
“…and that’s how the six-pointed galaxy came into existence.” He grinned.
Lyra smiled. “How about… the time the five of us had separate bodies and we created an ancient civilization conspiracy of our own? It all started when Sweetroll was elected president…
“Karl stands before you, surrounded by the five vampire families. Before you stands the Incomplete One, his silvery sheen sending terror into all of you. He speaks with a voice of power, that you cannot hope to disobey… The Disc of Tzeentch hovers in front of you-“
“I just realized something.” Rainbow Dash remarked.
“What?” Ford asked.
“This is like that other Warhammer Loop. You know, the one that isn’t in space? The plot line even feels vaguely familiar. It was a looong time ago though-“
Ford nodded. “I suppose it is… haven’t been to the other Warhammer myself, I just picked up all the RPG material I could while I was at a hublike Loop. Now can we finish? This is the climax and you’ve interrupted the amazing confrontation I’ve crafted out of this.”
“Continue on.”
“Now you need to roll a 3 or lower to survive this attack, and you’re out of fate points…”
“OH COME ON.”
“And now… the new Lab is ready, once again.” Ford said, grinning. The lab had been renovated once more to a more advanced state. A holographic map of Yggdrasil was in the center of the room. Various monitors and screens were displaying bits of information, most of it centered around dimensional mechanics. Others were focused on monitoring the weirdness of Gravity falls, while others were apparently combing through vast stores of information looking for interesting bits of information.
Twilight smiled. “This is pretty impressive for such a young Looper… Though you don’t have a plasma ball.”
Ford frowned. “Why would I need a plasma ball?”
“Because every serious Lab needs a plasma ball.” Twilight said, as if this explained everything.
Lyra nodded in agreement.
Ford shrugged, before pulling out a strange object that looked a bit like a snow globe. “This is a dimensional rift, a side-effect of using the Portal in its unsafe state. It’s always created in a baseline loop.” He handed it to the two girls. “The rift is extremely dangerous. We’ve got to keep it locked up and safe. I dismantle the portal baseline because of this tear. It could, in theory, tear the universe apart.”
Twilight’s eyes widened. “So you weren’t joking when you wrote those Journals. It could tear the universe apart.”
“Yes. Yes it could. I’ve naturally worked out the bugs that resulted in that now, but that doesn’t change the fact that this thing still exists. At some point we’re going on a quest to seal it.” He shrugged. “That’ll happen… within the week I think.”
Lyra rolled her eyes. “You’re not good with going baseline, are you?”
“Uh… no not really. I prefer to spend my time investigating or having fun. Going baseline doesn’t really serve anything usually.”
Twilight shrugged.
“AND I-“
Pinkie leapt onto the table, kicking off Ford’s bag of dice, rolling the infinity sided die out onto the floor.
Ford’s eyes widened. “What’s it going to do?”
Everyone held their breath.
There was silence.
“You rolled an eight.” Ford said, turning to Pinkie. “Nobody’s ever rolled an eight before.”
“COOL!” Pinkie said, grinning.
“Of course that still means that the eldritch horror eats you. Sorry about that. Princess Unatainabelle is forever locked away, far from all your reaches.” He chuckled. “As always.”
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Gravity Falls: Friendship is Magic 26: Changelings, Elections, Unicorns, Bill, OH MY.
Ford woke up in the field of wheat. This time gravity was inverted and he was standing on a cheese cloud.
“BILL! You’ve done this one before!”
“HAVE I? REALLY? I BELIEVE THE EXPLODING ANCHOVY IN THE DISTANCE WAS A NICE TOUCH”
Ford rolled his eyes at the triangular being. “So, I take it Stan convinced you to go baseline?”
“MORE OR LESS. PERSONALLY, I LIKE OUR LITTLE GAME OF SEE IF YOU CAN KEEP ME FROM BREAKING THE RIFT! THE SCORE IS 874 TO 623, MY LEAD IN CASE YOU’VE FORGOTTEN.” Bill... winked. “NOW WITH THE PONIES EVERYWHERE IT SURE WILL BE INTERESTING...”
“I wonder why you keep going with this. The loop ends right after you shatter it anyway.”
“ONE OF THESE DAYS SIXER, THERE’S GOING TO BE AN EXPANSION. AND I’M GOING TO LOVE IT WHEN I FINALLY GET TO PARTY! PERHAPS YOU SHOULD JUST GIVE ME THE RIFT THIS TIME, GET IT OVER WITH. SEE WHAT HAPPENS.”
“You know that always causes the Loop to end or crash. Yggdrasil doesn’t know what Weirdmageddon entails yet.”
“BUT IT WILL ONE DAY! AND WHEN THAT DAY COMES... WELL WON’T IT BE FUN?”
Ford rolled his eyes. “And of course I will stop you.”
“AHAHAHAHAHAHHAH! THAT’S WHAT YOU THINK! REMEMBER, I LEARN AS WELL!”
Then the two of them felt a disturbance in the mindscape. “What?” Ford said, looking around.
Standing in front of them was Luna. She looked ticked off.
Bill and Ford blinked. “Uh... you kind of interrupted something miss.”
“YEAH. CENTURIES OF RIVALRY HERE.”
Luna glared. “You have no right to intrude on this domain!”
Bill groaned. “LISTEN, LADY, I’VE BEEN IN AND OUT OF SIXER’S DREAMS HERE MORE TIMES THAN YOU COULD IMAGINE. IT’S ROUTINE AT THIS POINT.”
Luna glared. “That changes nothing, you need to leave!” She raised her hand, trying to send Bill out of the mindscape. Bill just rolled his eyes.
“MAYBE IF YOU WERE THE ACTUAL LOOPER, THAT MIGHT WORK. BUT YOU’RE JUST A PITIFUL SKIN PUPPET! HERE, DO A DANCE!”
Luna suddenly found herself doing the cha-cha. She gaped in terror.
Bill turned back to Ford. “WELL, I SUPPOSE I BETTER GET PLANNING. THE GAME IS ON SIXER, LET’S SEE WHO WINS THIS TIME! AHAHAHAHAHAHHAH!”
Ford woke up with a start, the strange images flashing across his mind again. He groaned.
It was time to Bill-proof the shack...
“So.” Ford said, looking at the seven girls before him. “You’ve all met Bill before?”
“Twice.” Twilight responded.
“Good. You need to know a bit more, probably. He’s a loop-aware entity-”
“We know that.” Rainbow Dash grumbled.
Ford shook his head. “He’s... different. He’s definitely not looping, but he is gaining skills. Back in baseline, he couldn’t read minds at the drop of a hat, he had to search around the dreamscape for a while to find what he was looking for. Now? He can scan minds virtually instantly. He also seems to know things he has no way of knowing, things none of the Loopers present could possibly know...”
“If he’s able to scan Looper memories, he can probably dig things up from their subconscious that even they aren’t aware of.” Twilight offered.
Fluttershy shuddered. “I... don’t like that idea...”
“Yeah...” Rarity nodded. “And if he can handle Pinkie’s mind, we aren’t likely to shock him out of our minds.”
Pinkie nodded. “He has a strong mind. Or maybe he’s just insane.”
“Both.” Ford responded. “I can create a device that will keep him from possessing people, but that doesn’t keep him from making deals and entering your mindscape. To my immense annoyance. And since this is baseline, you have to go on a quest to get some unicorn hair so we can make it!”
Rarity rolled her eyes, transforming herself into her unicorn form. She then cut off a large chunk of her hair, instantly growing it back with magic. “Will this do darling?”
Ford blinked. “I... I feel rather dumb now. Well there goes the mission into the forest to go find unicorns...”
Fluttershy spoke up. “Um... I’d still like to go, see what the unicorns are like here. It’d be nice to see them.”
Rarity smiled. “I’d like to go at least check as well. Perhaps they can be helpful.”
Ford snorted. “This dimension’s unicorns are... frustrating.”
“Then I’ll teach them some proper class. Come along Fluttershy.” Rarity said as she grabbed the book. “Probably best if we go as ponies... want to blend in after all.”
The two left, with Ford holding the unicorn hair. He looked at it, mildly annoyed. “You know what?” He raised his hands, a golden light surrounding them. He clapped all twelve of his fingers together. “There, now the entire shack is Bill-proofed. No need to make that primitive unicorn barrier...”
The TV suddenly turned on. “BREAKING NEWS! THE MAYOR IS DEAD! A new election will be held at the town hall at high noon. Bring your hats.”
“FORD I’M RUNNING FOR MAYOR AGAIN!” Stan said, grinning.
Ford rolled his eyes. “You go do that. I presume I don’t have to give the girls the mind-control tie?”
Stan groaned. “No. You don’t. I’m going to win this one! Though they are welcome to help-”
Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. “You know what? I’m going to run as well!”
Ford sighed. “Well she meets all the requirements... though she doesn’t have a hat...”
Rainbow Dash waved her hand, placing a crown version of the Element of Loyalty on her head. “Now?”
“That’ll work.” Ford said. “Have fun running for mayor. I’ll be in my Lab if anyone needs me.”
Lyra followed her “grandfather” down into the Lab.
Twilight smiled. Time to get Rainbow Dash elected...
Stan glared. “You girls are going down!”
“You sure?”
“Positive! This is my home loop, and I’ve long since figured out how to win these people over!” He leaned in, glaring at the four girls. “And there’s nothing you can do to-”
“I’M RUNNING TOO!” Pinkie said, currently the pony performer. She danced around with her hat.
“That’s it. I forfeit.” Stan and Rainbow Dash said at the same time.
Twilight shrugged. “Guess we’re all helping Pinkie run now...”
“So gramps, what exactly is your history with Bill? What’s his story?”
“I’m not entirely sure what his story is...” Ford said, scratching his chin. “He’s never told me. He’s an inter-dimensional eldritch abomination. Before the Loops, he could see into all the local dimensions. He was a powerful being trapped in a decaying dimension, the nightmare realm, and all he wanted to do far as I could tell was get out and have a party. He’s trillions of years old, older than many Loopers. He spent his time influencing people with dreams across all sorts of realities. He’s been the inspiration for the Eye of Providence and the Illuminati in more than a few dimensions. His plan consists entirely of opening a direct gateway from his world to ours.” Ford sighed. “I’m sad to say that baseline, I believed he was my friend. He designed the first Portal for me, the one with flaws specially designed to rip holes in the fabric of space time for him to use for his own ends. I took it upon myself to make sure he could never get into our world...”
“And?”
“...And I failed baseline. And the first few times I tried to stop it while Awake. He tears into the world beginning his Weirdmageddon and... and then the Loop ends. No-one, not even him, knows what happens after he unleashes his chaos.”
“Then what happened after the Loops started?”
“Well him and I became more of.. rivals than mortal enemies I guess you could say.” Ford shrugged. “The loops have a way of lessening conflicts. He’s actually keeping score over our little game of chess with the Rift. But I have noticed him getting smarter. This may just be him gleaning information from my own mind as it gets older, but I’m not sure. I know he’s not Looping, for he would have Ascended long ago if that were the case. But he is adding to himself somehow... It is a great mystery, and as usual he tells me nothing.”
Pinkie grinned. “THEY LIKE ME! THEY REALLY LIKE ME!”
“Miss Pie, you are up 99% in the polls! Do you attribute that to your performance, your parties, or the fact that you are a sentient pony in a top hat?”
“I’M A SENTIENT PONY IN A TOP HAT!” Pinkie winked, tossing her cane into the air. “Now... who wants free candy? I know I do! Candy for everyone!”
Stan blinked. “We don’t even have to do anything. Usually Gideon tries something at this point but... I don’t think we have to worry about him.”
“Pinkie, mayor of Gravity Falls.” Rainbow Dash thought about this. “You know that makes perfect sense when you think about it.”
“It does, don’t it?” Applejack responded.
Stan nodded. “Scary how much this town seems to be made for her...”
Meanwhile, Bud Gleeful sighed, silently admitting defeat.
The crowd held their breath.
The eagle soared through the air.
It landed on the pile of birdseed had completely covered Pinkie. It kissed the pile.
Everyone was silent.
“Does that mean the pile of birdseed is Mayor?” Manly Dan asked. Wendy groaned.
Pinkie hopped out of the pile. “NO SILL! It means I am... MAYOR OF GRAVITY FALLS!” She did a fancy jig and launched off all her party cannons. “AND NOW WE ALL CELEBRATE A NEW ERA IN THIS TOWN!!!”
“Celebrating your demise...”
Pinkie blinked. “What was that?”
Suddenly, Chandra stood up in the crowd, a strange green light enveloping her. Soon, a tall woman stood before them, perfectly black skin and piercing green eyes.
“CHRYSALIS!” The Equestrian Loopers gasped.
Suddenly, dozens of dozens of changelings began to appear in the crowd as Chrysalis laughed.
Twilight, Stan, Pinkie, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Wendy, and Soos all stood their ground. “You are going down changelings!”
“Oh yeah?” Chrysalis said, cackling as each changeling turned themselves into copies of the Loopers (plus Wendy and Soos) “How are you going to fight yourselves?”
Twilight sighed, raising her hand. Then she paused. “You know what? It’s been a while since I’ve fought myself. Let’s see how this goes.”
The two groups charged.
Chrysalis blinked. “Where am I?”
The Shapeshifter dealt her a hand of cards. “The bunker. Get used to it, we aren’t getting out of here anytime soon.”
“It’s actually a rather nice place.” Ivan reassured her. “If you exclude Powers over there.”
“Why are we gambling for rocks? What is the purpose?” The agent in question asked.
Chrysalis blinked. “What happened?”
“You probably got beaten by the girls. They decided they didn’t want to kill you, but they couldn’t just let you run free. So they put you here.” The Shapeshifter took a drink of his coconut martini. “Personally, I like the easy life down here. They cater to almost our every need.”
Chrysalis blinked. “I was going to rule this town! I was going to finally unleash my swarm on the world! WHY? WHY? WHY NOW???”
Ivan patted her on the back. “There there, all of us had moments like this from time to time... well except Powers.”
“I do not understand the meaning of that look.”
Ivan sighed. “But trust us, you’ll get used to it down here. It’ll be nice.”
Chrysalis roared.
Rarity and Fluttershy returned to the shack late at night.
Rarity walked right up to Lyra, glaring. “Your ancient race of unicorns were complete and utter jerks.”
“But they left behind-”
“That doesn’t change the fact that they were absolutely abhorrent!”
“They were pretty mean...” Fluttershy commented. “They tried to take my wings...”
Lyra glared. “But, they were so awesome! They were an ancient civilization in existence before us! They were-”
“Jerks. So anything else matters naught.” Rarity said, huffing.
Lyra rolled her eyes. “Fine. At least I can take solace in the fact that-”
“They played rave music.” Rarity moaned. “RAVE MUSIC! And bad rave music at that!”
Fluttershy nodded. “It was pretty bad...”
Lyra facepalmed.
Bill cracked his knuckles. “WELL, I’VE GOT TO GO FIND A PAWN TO USE NOW. GOTTA AT LEAST TRY TO WIN AFTER ALL. WANT TO HELP ME PINKIE?”
Pinkie pondered this...
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Gravity Falls: Friendship is Magic 27: The Dreams of Many...
“WHO TO CHOOSE... WHO TO CHOOSE...”
The Loopers were all out, seeing as they had the rather annoying anti-possession thing going on. Bill needed to make some choices, and quick. And what better way to do that than to visit the dreams of everyone?
And just to make it more fun, he’d even visit the minds of those he couldn’t possess. Wouldn’t want to make them feel left out...
Twilight glared at the scene before her.
Books were falling from the sky into a pit of lava. “Really?” She asked. “Is this the best you can do?”
“NOPE!” Bill said, cackling. He vanished.
Twilight looked around, waiting for whatever horror Bill had dreamed up to appear.
She waited a minute.
Nothing happened.
She waited five minutes.
Nothing happened.
Her eye twitched. “Oh I get it, it’s nothing isn’t it? You’re not going to do anything.”
No response.
“This is just some hair-brained scheme to make me completely afraid of absolutely nothing.” She sat down. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
She waited ten minutes.
Her entire face twitched. “You know what? I’m just going to wake up now-”
She didn’t wake up. Her eyes widened.
“Oh no-”
And then. Nothing happened. And Twilight screamed.
“Everyone... hates... my... fashion...” Rarity said, lip quivering. Then she laughed out loud. “Dreeeeam! Totally a dream.” She laughed, and started botching her designs just for the heck of it.
“HERE! Have a boot for a hat! The fashion should at least deserve to be hated!”
“I LOVE IT!” The dream-patron said, putting the boot on her head and galloping off.
Rarity blinked very slowly. “This. Is. The. Worst. Possible. Thing!”
Then she pulled out her drama couch, overplaying her moaning.
Bill facepalmed.
Fluttershy blinked.
Scary gigantic animals, check. Giant version of Angel, check. Animals that wouldn’t listen to her, check.
No big deal, really, she’d dealt with these kinds of things before. She’d just have to-
Then she saw a version of herself slam a bucket onto the giant Angel. She gasped, flying up to herself. “You don’t get to do that?”
“Oh yeah? Well BOO-HOO I’m going to do it more now.” Fluttershy got a bucket on her head. When she removed it the other version of her was torturing all the animals.
The animals shot her accusatory looks, digging into her soul. She growled at her alternate self. “I’m going to stop this!” She rushed herself, ready to take her out. She only got another bucket to the face, and when she looked, everything was even worse. Animals were burning.
She took a deep breath. So anything she did would only make it worse. So don’t do anything-
Mean Fluttershy apparently found this annoying and started blowing stuff up with some kind of kamehameha ability.
Fluttershy crawled behind a rock and shuddered.
Rainbow Dash screamed.
“WOW! THIS WAS TOO EASY.”
“HELP. ME.” Rainbow Dash said, trying to get away from the singing adorable puppets that were, for some reason, oddly creepy. Everything just seemed off. They didn’t move naturally... They sung bizarre songs... And they were impervious to all attacks! It was ridiculous! She began to devolve into a sort of panic.
Bill laughed. This one was more amusing than the others.
Now to watch horror dawn on her face as she realized the puppets were using real hearts in their hearts and crafts...
Applejack stared impassively at the destruction of all the apples before her.
“Eeyah nope not workin’ on me.”
She turned into an apple.
“Nice try.”
Then she watched as Big Mac ate her.
“Okay, I admit, this is a little disturbin’ but not too much for me to handle-”
Then she realized she was still “aware” while inside his digestive system. The stomach lining had faces constantly whispering just quiet enough for her not to be able to hear the words.
“...You’re a freak you three-edged dorito.”
The reward for this was being turned into a dorito.
Bill didn’t bother with Stan and Ford. They could detect his presence instantly and that would ruin the whole point.
So instead...
Blendin ran away screaming from the jackalope. “ANOMALY! ANOMALY! ANOMALY!!!!”
Bill facepalmed. Too easy. Again.
“TOO BAD I WON’T BE USING YOU THIS TIME... I HAVE TO BE CLEVER. SO HAVE A CONSOLATION PRIZE: A CANDY BAR THAT MELTS YOUR EYEBALLS!”
“WHAT?”
“YOU HEARD ME.”
Celestia stared at the X across the sky, pouring out hatred and destruction. The dream changed, shaping itself into a gigantic tree, a single spot on it lighting up in a flash of yellow.
Celestia wondered what on earth this dream could mean...
Bill wondered the same thing. But that didn’t stop him from giving Celestia a nightmare...
“WHY AM I IN A BANANA SUIT????”
Bill laughed, imagining Celestia trying to piece together this “premonition.”
“You are not welcome here.”
“WOW, YOU’RE PRETTY GOOD AT MONITORING DREAMS FOR A PATHETIC THREE-DIMENSIONAL BEING IMPOSED FROM A TECHNICOLOR CARTOON PRINCESS.”
Luna sighed. “Whatever it is you are planning, we will stand against you. This town is filled with great people who will stand up against you!”
“YEAH, AND MOST OF THEM ARE COMPLETE WIMPS COMPARED TO ME. HAVE YOU SEEN MY NIGH-OMNIPOTENT POWER LADY?”
“I see only what you can do in the dreamscape.”
“WELL GET READY, BECAUSE THAT’S COMING SOON TO A REALITY NEAR YOU! CHECK YOUR TV SCHEDULE AND SET IT TO RECORD!”
Luna was not amused.
“OH, AND I’M STICKING YOU INTO OREGON TRAIL NOW.”
Luna paled. “Oh please no. NOOOOOOOO!!!!!”
Bill blinked.
Well this was the first time he was being played with.
“Score is 4-4, our lead.” Thief said, spiking Bill like a volleyball.
“I’M KEEPING SCORE!” Sweetroll objected.
Human, taking advantage of Thief’s distracted state, hit the ball back and scored. “WOOT!” She and Seapony high-fived. Things exploded.
Pony glared at Thief. “How could you?”
“Sweetroll is annoying! Come on, surely you understand that!”
Sweetroll groaned. “I’m jumping into the Bon Bon pile.”
Bill watched as Sweetroll jumped into the pile of Bon Bons, all of which appeared to be comatose.
Bill blinked. “HUH. I CAN APPRECIATE THIS PLACE.”
“I’M SERVING NEXT!”
“OKAY BYE!” Bill said, vanishing, turning all the Bon Bon’s into ravenous monsters.
Seapony and Sweetroll were unaffected by this change.
As soon as Bill appeared, mad and crazy Gideon turned to look into his eye.
“I-I-I’M READY TO MAKE A DEAL!”
Bill nodded. “OF COURSE YOU ARE, YOU ALWAYS ARE. HOWZABOUT THIS...”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
Bill groaned. Simply his presence was enough to send Old Man McGucket into panic.
He left quickly.
“Pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows... Pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows... Pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows... Pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows... Pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows... Pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows...”
“WHY DO I HAVE SUCH CONTRADICTING FEELINGS ABOUT THIS?????” Chrysalis moaned.
Starlight G McGucket stared at the wasteland before her. There was nothing but brown dust everywhere, dirty air blowing past her.
A young woman walked up to her.
“Who are you?” Starlight asked.
“Littlepip.” The brown haired woman said, taking a sip of water from her canteen. “Welcome to the Wasteland.”
Starlight looked around, closely. “...What happened?”
“You did.”
Starlight turned to stare. “WHAT?”
“You messed too much with time.” She took another sip. “Caused a war.”
“I... I don’t believe you.”
“Of course you don’t. You couldn’t handle the burden of what you did... You’re going to have to though. You can’t go back.” She frowned. “I feel really sorry for you. Nobody from the old days can handle this...”
Starlight stared blankly ahead, thoughts whirling around her head.
Bill cracked his knuckles. He was going to give this one an extended nightmare. Time was fungible, after all, and this one was just ripe with possibilities to horrify...
The Doctor blinked.
“Ah. Dream manipulation. By a high end Loop Aware being.”
Bill sighed. “YOU PLAY DIRTY.”
The Doctor grinned. “I know, isn’t it fun? Now off.” He produced a sonic screwdriver.
Bill blinked. “SERIOUSLY?”
“Well you have to admit it looks cool doesn’t it?”
Bill groaned.
“Which reminds me I’ve got to talk to Stan about his fez...”
Powers blinked. “I fail to understand how my own disembowelment is supposed to be horrifying.”
Bill twitched. “YOU’RE TERRIFIED OF ZOMBIES IN BASELINE! WHAT IS WITH YOU?”
“I’ve become immunized to dream sequences by an inhibition implant in my brain.”
Bill blinked. “THAT... ACTUALLY MAKES SENSE... I’VE GOT TO HAND IT TO YOU. SO I CAN SHOW YOU THE REALLY DISTURBING STUFF THAT WILL GET EMBEDDED IN YOUR BRAIN LIKE A MEME! I CAN PULL OFF AN INCEPTION ON YOU...”
“What?”
“HOW’S ABOUT WE TRY THIS...”
Sweetie Drops was crying as the dozens of floating Lyra heads yelled at her.
“IT WAS MY JOB!”
“YOU HAD OUR TRUST!”
“I... I HAD TO!”
“AND FOR THAT WE HATE YOU FOR ETERNITY!”
Agent Sweetie Drops sobbed, an emotional wreck.
“...PERHAPS I CAN HELP YOU...”
Vez hfzt jlfumy.
Gravity Falls: Friendship is Magic 28: Adhesives
Ford produced the Rift from out of his pocket, the crack in the glass evident. “And now is the time I take one of you on a mission to seal the Rift.” He pointed at Lyra, smiling. “Come along!”
“YES!!!” Lyra said, jumping up and down. “We’re going to seal the rift!”
Ford nodded. “And we have to go somewhere in order to do it. Come along. The rest of you... do stuff with Stan. Or help Pinkie be mayor.”
And with that, the two (or six, depending on how you count) left on an adventure to seal the rift.
Applejack sighed. “Ah guess we’re being left out then huh? What are we gonna do?”
Twilight shrugged. “We can always go down to the bunker.”
Fluttershy smiled. “I do like the games Ivan plays. I think he’s almost ready to be introduced back into society.”
Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Eh... I’m going to go arm wrestle with the Shapeshifter again. Much more engaging.”
The Doctor whistled a tune. Those gnomes had been delightful people. But alas, he had to be off. There was the whole of space and time to explore!
He threw open the Tardis doors smiling. The smile was gone in an instant.
“My word! What have they done to you?”
The Tardis was.. ransacked. The walls were completely torn up, important components missing. The center column was shattered.
He gaped. “What? Who could have done this? HOW could they have done this?” He paused for a moment before cursing. “Blazes! I didn’t lock it! The one time I decide not to lock...” Then the Doctor paused. “But wait a minute... you wouldn’t let anyone in who wanted to do you harm if I wasn’t here... Someone had to have done something... Probably something magical.” He checked under a console, grabbing his fez. “I really hate magic right now... Whoever did this, I will find you! Nobody tears the Tardis apart!”
He dashed out of the blue box, looking for clues...
Ford stood on top of the hill, looking at the Gravity Falls cliffs. He smiled. “Lyra, what do those cliffs look like?”
Lyra blinked. “I have no-” Then another version of her took control, though it was hard to tell which. “OH MY GOSH. THAT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE A UFO.”
Ford grinned. “And guess what we’re standing on top of.”
Lyra looked down as ford magically moved a boulder a few feet away. She was staring at some kind of alien metal. Her eyes lit up. “ALIENS!” She bounced around, giddy. “ALIENS!!”
Ford laughed. “Everyone’s always so surprised when they find aliens here. Though a few have noticed the cliff formation early on.” He pried open the door. “Now, who wants to raid an alien UFO for dimensional adhesive?”
Lyra bounced up and down, saying “ME!” five times. Then she paused for a moment. “Hold it... if this is buried under a hill... how long has it been down here?”
“Millions of years. Before humans settled here.” Ford said, climbing down.
“Is this craft the source of the weirdness?”
“I’m personally leaning towards it being drawn here by the weirdness of the area, but Yggdrasil can’t seem to make up its mind on this. I really have no idea.”
Lyra’s eyes sparkled. “No... idea... A TRUE MYSTERY.” She went down after Ford. “LET’S SOLVE IT!”
“I like your enthusiasm!”
The two descended into the depths of the ancient alien craft.
“You know baseline I tore this thing apart to build the portal. It was a really unfair advantage I must say. So many technologies here beyond the comprehension of this society.”
Lyra nodded. “Did you ever think about giving it to them?”
“Oh I did work for the government from time to time, but I made sure they never knew where I got my technology. They really liked that tie.”
The two continued on through the craft, coming to a singular room with lots of tiles scattered around everywhere. “Look for something pink...” Ford said.
Lyra picked up a hexagonal tile with pink goo on it. “Like this?”
“Why yes, exactly like that.” Ford laughed. Then he frowned.
“What’s wrong?”
“Well... after this the loop just ends. I’ve actually really enjoyed my time with you and the girls. It’s been nice to have a granddaughter, frankly. I never got the chance to have a real family baseline...”
Lyra sighed. “We’ll see each other around, you know that. The Loops aren’t ending anytime soon, and your portal can connect to Equestria whenever we’re running tandem.”
Ford nodded. “Yes... but I have no guarantee how often that will happen. I have yet to quantify the nature of “connections” between loops that make them loop together more often...”
Lyra grinned. “Let’s make a connection! Come on!”
Ford rolled his eyes. “It’ll never work. I get the impression that trying to force it-”
“C’mon! Can’t hurt to try!”
Ford blinked. “Oh sure why not. Lyra Heartstrings, do the five of you wish to become my first apprentices from outside my home loop?”
“YES! YES! YES! YES! SWEETROLL!”
Ford laughed. “I’m going to take that last one as a yes.” The two fist-bumped. Ford shrugged. “Now watch Yggdrasil wait thirty thousand years before looping us together again.”
Lyra shrugged. “Eh, it’s not that long. Plus, I can now say I’m Ford’s apprentice!”
“Nobody knows who I am, Lyra. I’m not famous like the girls or the Doctor-”
“WHO CARES? Bragging rights.”
Ford rolled his eyes, chuckling. “Ah well, let’s just get this done and do whatever we can with the time we have left...”
They heard a thunk behind them.
Ford groaned. “I made sure we didn’t hit any buttons this time, the security system can’t have activated-”
The two of them stared at the visitor.
It was... Agent Sweetie Drops. She took of her sunglasses, a pained look on her face.
“Lyra... can we-”
Lyra rushed to Sweetie Drops, hugging her. “Shush. I understand what you did. I’ve experienced it many times.” She looked deep into her eyes. “It’s not your fault. You have to understand that.”
Sweetie Drops smiled. “So... he did...” She said, her voice soft. She smiled. “Thank you Lyra.” She backed away. “I’ll... I’ll leave you to your conversation. Can we get together later? Say, for lunch?”
“Yeah.” Lyra said, smiling.
Sweetie Drops left.
“She made a deal with Bill.” Lyra said, turning to Ford. “Prepare for-”
A grappling hook shot from seemingly nowhere, hitting Ford’s pack. The contents spilled onto the floor, including the Rift. Ford and Lyra dashed for it, only to have a cream-colored blur get to it before them.
Sweetie Drops - no, Billtie Cops - was holding the Rift in his/her hand, eyes sparking yellow. “YOU ALMOST HAD ME THERE, HANDS! VERY PERCEPTIVE! BUT SHE HAD TO KNOW I KEPT UP MY END OF THE DEAL.”
Lyra glared. “What did you promise her?”
“I SIMPLY GUARANTEED THAT YOU WOULD FORGIVE HER FOR WHAT SHE’D DONE.” He cackled. “DIDN’T BOTHER MENTIONING THAT YOU’D FORGIVE HER REGARDLESS!”
He growled, noticing that the Rift was no longer in his hand. Ford was levitating it towards himself.
Billtie Cops took out several mini-mines, throwing them directly at the Rift. Ford protected the delicate snowglobe with his cloak. “You should have broken it the moment you touched it Bill!”
“BUT WHERE’S THE FUN IN THAT? THIS IS OUR LITTLE GAME AFTER ALL!”
Ford drew his gun. “You’re just in a body, you can’t survive this-”
Lyra yelled. “NO!”
Ford blinked. “Why- oh. Yeah. Sorry I’m not that good with-”
Suddenly the Rift was knocked out of his hands and onto the floor. It cracked further.
Lyra roared, charging at Billtie Cops and touching her hand to his/her forehead. “Fidentus omnium. Magister mentiun. Magnesium ad homnem. Mangum opus. Habeus corpus. Inceptus Nolanus overratus. Magister mentium. Magister mentium. MAGISTER MENTIUM.”
She launched herself into the mindscape, flying at Bill with four different forms.
“VERY INTERESTING HANDS, I WASN’T EXPECTING THIS.”
Four forms of Lyra all went for Bill at the same time. “GET. OUT. OF. BON. BON!”
Bill dodged the attack by splitting up into a thousand jigsaw pieces. “PUH-LEASE, EVEN IF YOU ARE A LOOPER WELL VERSED IN THE MINDSCAPE, I HAVE COMPLETE DOMINION HERE. YOU CANNOT GET ME OUT OF HERE, AND I DOUBT THIS HARDENED SECRET AGENT CAN BE TALKED OR TICKLED TO SUBMISSION.”
The Lyra’s glared. They knew he was right.
“HOWEVER, I WILL BE WILLING TO VACATE THE PREMISES IF YOU MAKE A DEAL.”
The Lyra’s glared. “What sort of deal?”
“VERY SIMPLE: GIVE ME THE RIFT.”
The Lyra’s smirked. “No Deal.” Thief said.
Bill glared. “WHY DID YOU DECIDE SO FAST?”
“Because while we’ve had you distracted in here...” Human began.
“...you forgot one crucial detail...” Sweetroll continued.
“...Seapony isn’t in here.” Pony finished, grinning.
Bill’s eyes widened. “OH.”
Bill shifted his attention back to the body of Lyra, but it was too late. The Seapony-dominant body had, in the fraction of a second Bill was distracted by the mindscape battle, armed one of her special explosives.
BOOM!
Billtie Cops was flung into a nearby wall, hitting it with a thud. “OW! THAT HUR-”
Before he/she could do anything, Lyra produced an energy net from her Pocket, trapping Billtie Cops. He/she roared. “NO! NO YOU CANNOT STOP ME LIKE THIS!”
Ford and Lyra high-fived. Ford stooped down to look Billtie Cops in the eye. “You lose Bill. Now, we better get back to the shack so I can apply the adhesive.”
The two ran out of the UFO.
Billtie Cops allowed himself/herself to crack a smile two minutes later. “OH, I’ll JUST WAIT HERE... WAITING FOR THE BACKUP...”
“I got... A WIZARD!” Chrysalis said, slapping her card down on the table. “THE TRICK IS MINE!”
Powers blinked. “But I calculated it out to the penny...”
Ivan sighed. “I don’t like this game anymore.”
The Shapeshifter simply chuckled. “She is truly better at this than you are...”
They heard the familiar sound of the Bunker door opening. The Shapeshifter sighed. “Who is it now...? Twilight do you have my hamburger?”
To their surprise, it was someone none of them had ever met. Ivan’s eyes widened. “Receiver!”
“Not anymore.” Starlight said, turning to Powers. Powers blinked. “I feel strangely inclined to give you the secret code to our base in this region... 1982-1342-3149.” He rubbed his head. “Why did I do that?”
“Inception.” Was all Starlight offered before wiping all their minds.
Back in the Lab, Ford held up the bottle of pink adhesive. “There we go! All ready to seal a crack in space-time. Now just hand me the Rift...”
Lyra reached into her back, eyes widening. “Uh... it’s not here!”
Ford placed the adhesive down on the counter, searching his own bag. “Where is it? I know we had it when we got back to the Lab...”
Lyra’s jaw dropped. “Ford? The adhesive’s gone as well.”
Ford quickly ran up to the Shack. “EVERYONE! Use whatever powers you can to find a crack in spacetime!”
Twilight quickly cast some magic. “Found it! It’s heading towards the hill in a very unusual pattern-” Twilight paled. “That’s... that’s how Pinkie moves when she wants to go really fast.”
Ford blinked. “We’ve got to stop her!”
Twilight readied a teleport...
Pinkie dropped the Rift in front of Bill, who was still inside Sweetie Drops. Pinkie untied him/her.
Billtie Cops smiled. “THANK YOU PINKIE!” He said before smashing his/her foot down on the Rift.
Plink!
The snowglobe was unharmed. It didn’t even have a crack anymore.
Pinkie began laughing crazily. “I already sealed it! I had you didn’t I?” She grinned.
Billtie Cops smiled as Ford, Stan, Lyra, and the other 5 Elements appeared behind Pinkie in a teleport spell. “YES, IT WAS A GREAT JOKE WASN’T IT, LAUGHTER? UNFORTUNATELY I NOTICED THAT YOUR SIDE OF THE DEAL ONLY INVOLVED ME GETTING THE RIFT, IT GAVE ME NO GUARANTEE WHETHER IT COULD BE BROKEN OR NOT.”
Pinkie drooped. “You mean you expected this?”
“I WASN’T COMPLETELY SURE... BUT I HAD A CONTINGENCY PLAN JUST IN CASE! AHAHAHHAHAH!” Then Bill left Sweetie Drops. The agent blinked. “L-L-Lyra! I’m so sorry....”
“Don’t worry about it...” Lyra said, hugging her. “You’re safe now.”
Ford spoke up. “Twilight. Get us back to the Lab. Now.”
The group appeared in the Lab. What they saw shocked them.
Standing before the portal was Starlight Glimmer. In front of her were two devices: some gigantic device with the U. S. Government symbol on it, and another conglomeration of parts that looked like it came from a Tardis.
Twilight decided enough was enough, shooting a magical laser at Starlight. The gigantic Government device somehow absorbed it.
“Crap. It’s using the energy in this room to absorb magic...” Ford groaned.
Starlight turned to them. She looked... torn. “I... I have to keep the future from happening. I am sorry. I made a deal with the Beast with Just One Eye. But...” She shuddered. “I... I couldn’t let that future come true...”
Ford glared. “Bill lies! Don’t believe everything you saw!”
“But.. He was right.” Starlight said, her face contorting. “I had been messing with time... Trying to alter the past... The damage the Society caused... I had already created one horrid future as a result... He just showed me the end result...” She walked towards the column of Tardis bits. “But with this, I can make sure that will never come. I will lock the current timeline in place by anchoring to another dimension.”
“DON’T! THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT HE-” Ford began.
Starlight shook her head, waving her hand. Time magic began to flow around her, and Twilight recognized the Time Travel spell appear above Starlight. Starlight then pressed a button on the Tardis machinery, shooting a laser of light into the vortex.
Ford’s eyes widened. “No... NO! She’s accessing the deep past! She’s using a time displaced version of me to override the Portal’s security!”
The Portal activated. Instantly. A direct connection to the Nightmare Realm was formed, the dark, red, and distorted world easily visible through the central ring.
Bill floated out of the portal just as the Tardis bits flashed an odd blue color, cementing the timeline. This caused Bill to laugh. “IT’S GOING TO BE HARD TO CEMENT THE TIMELINE WHEN TIME IS DEAD!” He clapped his hands, blowing a hole in the roof of the Lab. The sky was visible, quickly turning a deep red. A great X began to tear across the sky.
Everyone gasped. Bill just cackled.
“WELL GUESS WHAT SIXER? THE SCORE IS NOW 875 TO 623! AHAHAHAH!”
Ford sighed, reluctantly clapping. “Well, I guess I have to admit defeat. Reluctantly.”
Bill nodded, turning to everyone. “WELL, I’M SORRY, BUT THE LOOP IS GOING TO END. SEE ALL YOU ALLIGATORS LATER! I LOOK FORWARD TO MEETING YOU ALL AGAIN, ESPECIALLY YOU PINKIE! MY LONGER-TERM OFFER WILL STILL STAND!”
Everyone stared in silence.
“NOW THREE... TWO... ONE... END!”
The wind blew.
Bill blinked.
Ford blinked.
Stan blinked.
The three of them spoke at the same time.
“IT. DIDN’T. END.”
Bill, for the first time in forever, looked like he wasn’t entirely sure what to do next. He simply floated up into the sky, right into the center of the X-shaped crack in the sky.
Rhnejlgisv vj opvx Whpvvuvkegksf ixxudspq mixalsw, kwhioql mk ojmnj as vqz. Ahlil gvz? Xhda’w xwm cox as yczws.
NOTE: if you don't want spoilers, skip to the next chapter first - there was a comp order issue.
(ORBSyndicate) [MLP/Warhammer40k/Gravity Falls]
“I call this meeting of Chaos Gods anonymous to order!” Pinkie yelled clapping her hooves. Slaanesh, Tzeeentch, and Nurgle joined in. Khorne just grunted, obviously a tad bored. Bill did nothing aside from looking like he really didn’t want to be here. The chair reserved for Discord was empty, with only an kumquat in it. Nobody questioned this.
“Now Bill…” Pinkie said, turning to Bill. “How have you been dealing with your chaotic desires the last few Loops?”
“HAVEN’T UNLEASHED UNIMAGINABLE TERROR AND HAVE BEEN DOING A GOOD JOB SUPPRESSING THE CHAOTIC DESIRES. I’VE DONE WHAT I WAS TOLD. WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO?”
Slaanesh ticked. “Oooooh… you’re fallen into suppression. Not good…”
“…WHAT?”
Tzeentch nodded. “By nature we are chaotic beings. If we try to suppress our nature, we lose our minds in the most damaging of ways. Apocalypse causing ways. It will also wrench at your very soul, tearing you apart from within.”
Nurgle agreed. “Trust me, we would know.”
Khorne grunted. “Remember that I wasn’t awake at that point-“
Tzeentch let out a snort. “And that changes the point of this how?”
Slaanesh chuckled. “He’s just trying to salvage his dignity before we get into the details. Why I remember-“
Pinkie held up a hoof. “We are not here to tell embarrassing stories of each other. That’s for next meeting. We are here today to assist Bill in his adaptations.”
Khorne grunted. “Still don’t see why we don’t just smash sense into him.”
Pinkie facehooved. “Khorne, you know that wouldn’t work.”
“It works a lot more often than you’d think.”
“I DO AGREE WITH THE BLOOD GOD. SMASHING WOULD BE VASTLY PREFERABLE.”
Tzeentch grinned a very evil grin. “He would prefer the smashing. That means we’re doing it right.”
“I OBJECT TO MY DISCOMFORT BEING A CRITERIA FOR SUCCESS.”
Slaanesh smirked. “Didn’t you revel in the discomfort of others baseline?”
“THAT’S BESIDE THE POINT. I WASN’T TRYING TO MAKE THEIR LIVES BETTER-“
Pinkie unfolded a scroll. “I will make a new world, a fun world. A party that never stops with a host that never dies.” She looked up. “This is from your speech with baseline Ford, trying to argue your case to him. You did believe you were making the world better.”
Bill was silent.
Tzeentch spoke up. “Now Bill, Chaos God of Alien Geometries and Random Weirdness, we’re here to teach you have to be a Chaos God that other Loopers can live with without completely denying your nature. Chaos is just a part of reality as anything else, but like everything in existence, too much of it is bad for you.”
“Except for-“ Slaanesh began.
“I do not need to hear any of your perverse arguments right now.” Tzeentch interrupted. “It’ll go against the whole point of this. Bill, you do not have to deny yourself. You can have your fun, you can use your powers for your own enjoyment. You can prank others and laugh at their expense.”
“In fact we recommend it.” Pinkie said, grinning. “PARTY PRANKS FOR ALL! Show your fellow loopers what it feels like to have confetti pelt them in the face from all directions at once!”
“…most Loopers faces do not point every direction.” Khorne observed.
“TRUST ME, IT’S RATHER EASY TO MAKE A FACE POINT ALL DIRECTIONS. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS WRAP THEM AROUND A DIMENSIONAL CONSTRUCT AND BLAST AWAY.”
Tzeentch nodded. “The triangle is right. Care to elaborate Bill?”
“WELL FIRST YOU’D HAVE TO ADAPT AROUND A FIFTH-DIMENSIONAL MATRIX. I’D RECOMMEND USING SOME KIND OF FLESHY ROPE FOR CREEPYNESS FACTOR AND…“
As Bill monologued, Pinkie smiled. Progress.
“So how was the meeting?” Ford asked.
“IT WAS FUN! And AMAZING! And we did a lot of discussion of multidimensional pranks!”
“YOU LOT ARE SO DOOMED IT ISN’T EVEN FUNNY.” Bill chuckled. Pinkie grinned.
Ford was mildly scared. “Well, the Stan o War is ready for another launch. Ready to explore the world?”
“OF COURSE!” Pinkie yelled.
Stan, from the boat, yelled back. “WOULD YOU GET THEM IN HERE? THE PORTAL’S FREAKING OUT AGAIN!”
Ford rolled his eyes. “Coming Stanley!” He ran in, to see the portal activate and deposit a grey unicorn mare on the ground.
Ford nodded. As expected. It was Littlepip again. She always arrived somehow just before the Stan o War took off. And she was always ready for adventure. This was the fifth time it had happened.
He walked into a hallway, making sure he was alone. Then he called Bill.
“Quite the coincidence that she has appeared again, isn’t it?”
“YEAH, TOTALLY IS SIXER. GUESS THE TREE THINKS THE STAN O WAR NEEDS TO CONTINUALLY BE CREWED BY THE SAME CREW, REGARDLESS OF REGULATIONS-“
“It’s not Yggdrasil doing this.” Ford said, tapping a wall absent-mindedly.
“OH?” Bill said, a hint of concern in his voice.
“Yggdrasil, while connection forming, does not generate non-Loopers whenever they are needed every time without fail. Sometimes, yes. But five times in a row? Yggdrasil is not that orderly. Not that predictable.”
“WHAT POSSIBLE EXPLANATION COULD THERE BE SIXER? IT’S NOT LIKE ANY OF US CAN JUST REACH INTO THE CODE OF YGGDRASIL AND PULL HER OUT. THAT’D BE ABSURD! YOU THINK TOO HARD-“
“You’re storing her within the TriNet.” Ford said, turning to stare at the triangle before him. “It makes sense, she appears every time this crew gets together, you are the only one who is always present, and it’s the only way there could possibly be enough space to store her. Trying to store her in any single Looper mind could be disastrous as her personality evolves and changes. However, your Net is not a single Looper mind.” He turned back to Bill. “You are sacrificing your valuable storage space for someone who was just a solidified dream when you met her!”
Bill was silent.
“Why?” Ford asked.
“SHE’S FUN AND DESTRUCTIVE, AND I HAVE PLENTY OF EXTRA SPACE NOW THAT I DON’T NEED TO COME UP WITH SOME GRAND MASTER PLAN. IT WASN’T A BIG DEAL ANYWAY, DIDN’T WANT TO TELL YOU KNUCKLEHEADS THOUGH BECAUSE YOU’D HAVE THIS EXACT REACTION.”
Ford knew Bill wasn’t telling the entire truth, but he decided to let it slide. “Allright. I just wanted an explanation.”
“GOOD SIXER, NOW EXCUSE ME I HAVE A… THING TO ATTEND TO.”
The sound of Stan screaming and Pinkie laughing could be heard coming from down the hallway.
Bill chuckled, beginning to float away.
“Bill?” Ford asked.
“WHAT NOW-“
“Thank you.”
Bill blinked, stunned into silence. Wordlessly he turned around, drifting away.
Ford smiled. There was hope for that triangle. There really was hope. He was very surprised.
(ORBSyndicate) [MLP/Gravity Falls/Fallout]
Big Mac cleaned a glass, observing the various patrons. One table in particular caught his eye. Sitting at the table were five ponies, though only three of them were usually equine in form. There were Loopers Lyra and Pinkie, both talking up a storm. Between the two of them was Bon Bon, who was doing surprisingly well in the conversation for not being a Looper.
Across from them was a red unicorn stallion with obviously artificial wings and a six-fingered hand cutie mark, Ford Pines. His brother, grey earth pony Stan, was standing behind him, secretly taking bets on how long it took for Bon Bon to get a “what the freaking fudge” face as he called it.
The five at the table were having a good laugh and reminiscing about times on the Stan o War, Bon Bon and Lyra serving as their audience.
Pinkie was currently the one talking “-and then Bill went KAWOOSH and there was a big explosion, and Blackbeard just went-“
“NOPE” Stan said in a mocking impression of Blackbeard. Everyone laughed.
Then the doors to the bar flew open, and everyone went silent. Standing before them was a tremendous yellow alicorn - as tall as the Emperor - wearing a top hat and an eyepatch. The stallion had the Bill Cipher Zodiac as a cutie mark, making it obvious who it was. He walked to the bar and sat down, frowning at Big Mac. “Something strong enough for a Chaos God, stat.”
Big Mac nodded, getting the drink.
“Oh and something for the dream as well.” Bill said, generating Littlepip on the stool next to him. Littlepip wasted no time belting out a chain of swears at Bill.
Bill sat patiently while Littlepip devolved into rapid breathing. “You quite done?”
“NO! How does one accidentally summon me while in a duel with Slaanesh? HOW?”
“Chaos.” Bill responded, grumpy. “Doesn’t matter anyway-“
“Slaanesh kick your pants again?” Big Mac asked, tossing some brain bleach to Littlepip who accepted with scary intensity.
Bill glared at Big Mac. “YOU DO NOT WANT TO PUSH THE ISSUE. SUFFICE IT TO SAY THERE WAS A DUEL. I WAS NOT PLEASED BY THE RESULT.”
“Not pleased?” Littlepip yelled. “You-“
Bill censored the resulting spiel because it was likely to scar the minds of those present. Slaanesh got really creative, needless to say.
“Look, Pippy, you only exist because I say so. I could remove you at any time I wished. So shush.”
Littlepip’s face turned scrunchy before she chugged some brain bleach.
Back at the other table, Lyra spoke up. “Grandpa Ford? Question.”
“What is it Lyra?”
“Bill stores Littlepip on his TriNet right for your Stan o War voyages, maintaining her and everything right?”
“Yes.”
“Why does he not store others as well? Many people would like to pseudo-loop like he does-“
“Ah…” Ford said, nodding sadly. “Well, you see there’s a problem with the system.”
Lyra cocked her head. “How so?”
“Look at Littlepip’s tail.” Ford said.
Everyone did so.
“Why is it red?” Lyra asked.
“Well we were in a Fallout Equestria loop and…”
The crew of the Stan o War surveyed the wasteland, all in pony form (except Bill, who decided to be geometric chaos being early on.)
Littlepip frowned. “Yep, there I am. Running out of the Stable.” She sighed. "Sometimes I wish I actually replaced people rather than just being something Bill cooks up every time he feels like it…”
“I could override the default mind and put you in its place, though that would destroy the original mind.” Bill commented, choosing to not use his normal voice. He had claimed he’d just grown tired of it, but in reality it was because it made people cover their ears whenever they heard it.
Littlepip shook her head. “Yeah, not an option.”
Pinkie - who was replacing Silver Bell - grinned. “Maybe you can help me throw actual parties? Huh? Wanna spread cheer?”
Littlepip considered this while Stan of all people got an idea.
“Hey Dorito-“
“I AM NOT A DORITO.” Bill yelled, returning to default.
“Sure whatever. She’s always complaining about a little Littlepip in her head - can’t you just wave your magic hands and put her inside the other her’s head?”
“ARE YOU CRAZY? THAT WOULD REQUIRE A-“ Bill blinked, finally comprehending what Stan just said. “Hold on a sec… That just might work…. Hey Pippy, want to make the little pony thing literal?”
Littlepip blinked, pondering this for a second. “I don’t see why no- WHAUGH!” Littlepip yelled as Bill levitated her into the air and then clapped his hands. He dusted them off. “Good, she’s inside this world’s pony now. What should we do for now?”
Pinkie grinned. “WASTELAND PARTY!”
“I like your style.” Bill chuckled. “I’m going to pay the Goddess a visit first though. ‘Great and Powerful’ needs to be kicked down a few pegs by real power. I think I’m going to use sharks this time. Coming Stan?”
“Can we use mermen? I’ve always wanted to freak gods out with mermen.”
“I don’t see why not. NOW AWAY WE GO!”
Littlepip came too, aware she was inside a mindscape. She prepared herself to become the little pony in her head. It was rather meta, to be frank.
The body she was in opened her eyes, revealing a Stable ceiling. Littlepip began to plan how exactly she, as a little voice in her own head who knew about the future, was going to go about this…
She (the body) stood up, groaned, and looked down at her white hooves.
Wait what- white?
Blackjack blinked. Was that a tiny voice in the back of her head screaming obscenities? Were subconsciouses supposed to know words she didn’t? Was it inventing words on the fly?
Best not to think about it right now, it was time to get ready for work. Security pony. Yay.
Littlepip screamed. “BILLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!”
“You put her in the wrong body.” Pinkie said, observing Blackjack talking to herself from a distance.
Bill shrugged. “Eh, wasn’t intentional. I did try to cut a few corners by just having her consciousness seek out the most prominent character in the Loop. Forgot momentarily that she wasn’t the only hero around here.”
Pinkie giggled as Blackjack chugged more whiskey obviously to spite the little voice in her head.
“Be more careful next time.” Ford cautioned. “While it’s funny right now, several more times would get tedious.”
Bill rolled his eye. “Yeah fine whatever.”
A few Loops later Bill was bored, so he waved his hand to summon Littlepip.
Blackjack stood before him.
“…WAIT WHAT?”
“Oh. Hi Bill.”
©“HOW DID- WHY ARE-?”
Blackjack looked down at her hooves, frowning. “Wait no… Oh fudge it. I thought I was out of this body-“
Bill blinked. “LITTLEPIP?”
“Yeah. And there’s a little voice in my head screaming to me to go drink some whiskey.” She glared at Bill. “This is all your fault and I’m going to find a way to make you pay. Right after I satisfy Blackjack’s apparent need for whiskey to get her to shut up.”
Little- Black- Littlejack? Walked off.
Bill just floated there, not entirely sure what had just happened.
“…We discovered later that when he stored Littlepip at the end of that look, he took Blackjack with her by accident.” Ford continued. “The TriNet was apparently unable to keep the two of them separate, so… the retrieval code became glitches. Sometimes you get a Littlepip in Blackjack’s body with a tiny Blackjack in their head, sometimes the opposite. Sometimes you just get a fusion of the two of them, while others it seems to be just Blackjack or just Littlepip. It gets really confusing when Bill retrieves more than one at once, each one completely different from the others. He has no control over the randomness.”
“What exactly caused this?” Lyra asked.
“As it turns out the TriNet is not well designed to store actual individuals, much like a Pocket. In the refreshing the TriNet goes through, something as complicated as an actual person - or pony - cannot be kept separate from other similar codes due to sheer complexity. They meld together and cannot be removed, and Bill cannot create a secondary retrieval code. We’re really lucky it works at all.” Ford sat back. “Does that answer your question Lyra?”
Lyra nodded. “So… is Littlepip-Blackjack stable?”
“About as stable as you.” Ford responded.
“SWEETROLL.” Lyra burst out, then blushed. “Uh, sorry about that, we’re having a sweetroll war…”
Ford chuckled. “Indeed.”
At the bar, Littlepip drunk herself under the table. Bill chuckled.
Bon Bon never made a “what the freaking fudge” face, much to Stan’s disappointment.