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CodyLabs — Forest of Daggers: Chapter 13
#alien #fanart #fanfiction #ghost #robot #scifi #shapeshifter #gravityfalls #dipperpines #wendyxdipper #wendycorduroy #wendip #seeyounextsummer #forestofdaggers
Published: 2018-07-13 11:00:25 +0000 UTC; Views: 9980; Favourites: 41; Downloads: 6
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Chapter 13: The Tunnels of Nope
Author note: This is one of my favorites illustrations. It's cute, but also dark and scary and ominous. Since that's the exact same vibe I'm going for in the story as a whole, I'm calling it a win.
Also, who here remembers that 2005 movie 'King Kong'? I can't speak for the new one since I haven't seen it, but the 2005 one was a totally GREAT show. I'd recommend it to anyone over 13. If you HAVE seen the movie, then I'm sure you know exactly what I mean when I say 'BUG PIT'. If you haven't seen it, and are confused about what I'm driving at, just watch This Video Here.
So.
Yeah.
I drew inspiration for this story from a very large number of sources. Not only Gravity Falls, but also the Incredibles, The Iron Giant, Lord of the Rings, Metroid especially... And, in this instance, King Kong.
And, as always, killer robots make everything better. On with the story!
Dipper and Wendy broke through the ground, fell about 5 feet, and landed hard on top of each other. The lion bots arrived at the crevice a few seconds later, and angrily pressed their heads up to the opening. Their saws extended and spun, trying to reach down at the escaped humans. Sparks and metal shavings showered around them, and the sound of their enemies’ assault filled their ears. But despite all the racket and the show, there were too many logs, branches, and mess between the humans and the hungry weapons. They couldn’t reach.
“HA! YEAH!” Wendy rose to her knees, looked up at their pursuers, and shouted over the noise. “FOILED AGAIN, JERKS!”
Dipper crawled out from underneath his friend, and looked around.
When the predators had noticed them a few minutes ago, the teens didn’t really have an abundance of escape options. This was the first one that popped into Dipper’s head, and so this was where they went: great mass of deadfalls and decayed metal which wove together beneath the forest’s floor. Here, in the hard, sharp, claustrophobic space, they would be safe from their larger pursuers.
Dipper crawled through a narrow gap between two logs, just to get away from the lion’s falling sparks. Wendy squeezed her way in after them, and they found themselves in an even smaller hollow, that seemed to extend on for a ways. The only light down here was that which filtered down through cracks and crevices, and that which they brought themselves. As they paused to catch their breath, Dipper pulled his headlamp out of his pack and thumbed it on.
Behind and above them, the lions’ saws fell silent, as they realized their prey had escaped. Faint metallic footsteps echoed through the thicket now, as they prowled away; most likely back to the ‘deer’ they’d been interrupted from eating.
Dipper turned himself over, and rubbed his arm where he’d bumped it on the way down. “I think we lost them.”
“Well that’s super.” Wendy squeezed her shoulder pads sideways, trying to get comfortable.
“What’s their beef anyway?” Dipper asked. “I mean, we did kind of accidentally sort of steal her kid, but…”
“And kind of shot at her and stuff…”
“Well, yeah… But she tried to eat us even before that… How about the other one then? We’ve never even seen him before.”
“I guess they’re just really… Really angry, territorial creatures… Like wolverines. Or crocodiles, or… Grizzly bears or Corduroys or something. They just loose it when you mess around in their business.”
“Uh… Yeah… I guess…”
“So what now?” Wendy shrugged, and gestured toward the winding, maze-like darkness ahead. “We just crawl around down here until we’re far enough away?”
“I guess…”
“Well then.” She gestured ahead with a little flourish of her hand. “Ladies first.”
Dipper laughed, and elbowed her as he crawled past. She snorted and elbowed him back, then they continued on, while the light from the surface faded behind them…
“So where is this place?” Robbie asked, as he stepped cautiously around an ordinary fern. “Which of these are… Made of knives or whatever?”
“Umm…” Mabel squinted down at the creased, stained paper of Dipper’s old map. “This stupid poop-headed map doesn’t even have a ‘you are here’ dealio…” She complained.
“Aww man!” Robbie scoffed. “Every map should have that marked… That’s just, like, normal. All the maps in the mall have them.”
“I know! They’re so handy…” Mabel turned the map around a few times, hoping it would start to make some sense.
Robbie pulled out his smartphone. “Maybe… Yeah, this one tells me where we are. Maybe we can match them…?”
They compared the phone’s image to the map’s, argued for a few minutes about which direction North was, and finally decided that they were very, very close.
“Hmm…?” Mabel turned around a few times. “Maybe if I close my eyes and concentrate really hard, I’ll be able to use my brain to sense the psychic empathetic signals of their love. Because all robot animals love me.” She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her fingers to her temples. (A classic and proven psychic pose.) “It’s science.” She promised. “I know because I saw it on Star Trek.”
Robbie leaned back against a tree to wait. “Yeah.” He grunted. “Because that’s gonna work.”
“It’ll totally work.”
“Will not.”
“Will too.”
“Will not.”
“Shush! You’re interrupting the love waves.”
“Ugh, this is so… Hey wait a minute.” It didn’t take Robbie long to realize that the tree behind his back wasn’t wood. “Oh hey.” He turned around and poked it. “We’re already here.”
“I TOLD YOU IT WOULD WORK!” Mabel jumped up with an excited squeal, and high-fived her pig.
“Oh come on. That didn’t-“
“THIS IS SO COOL!” Squeaked Mabel, as she rushed forward to start poking and prodding at things. “We can be explorers and robo-botanists and we can—Oh wait a minute. Hold on.” She turned to her pig and bent down. “I just remembered!” She told him. “You’re fat and naked! You need to be shielded by a… Huggy-Wuvvy Tummy Bundle™!”
“A what.” Robbie frowned.
“IT WORKS FOR PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGS™!” She explained. Then she reached under her sweater, and produced a baby-blue pig-pack, which she then strapped to herself and loaded the pig into. Waddles did not seem to mind this in the least, whereas Robbie looked on with disgust and confusion. “Uh… Remind me.” He said. “Why do we have a pig again?”
“Well…” She looked at the pig. It looked at her. They both looked at Robbie. “We just do.” She assured him. “And we love him and now you love him too because you must. That’s the way things roll when you’re under Mabel jurisdiction!”
“Great.”
With her pet safe, Mabel continued into the forest to start her work. This ‘work’ mainly just involved finding new types of metal plants and tiny robots, playing with them for a minute, then tossing a specimen into the backpack Robbie was carrying.
After a while of this, Robbie looked around again.
“Ugh… Man.” He brought up a hand to block the beautiful sunlight, and squinted grumpily around at the gentle swaying of the bright green leaves. How was this a dangerous, nightmarish place? It was… Beautiful and pleasant… “I was expecting, like… Skulls or something.” He protested sulkily.
“Skulls?” Mabel asked.
“Like, you know.” Robbie shrugged. “Impaled on spikes or lying on the ground… Or skeletons up in trees or something. Or I was expecting it to actually look like knives… Right? Or to be all dark and cloudy? Or the air to smell like death? Or it to be scary at all…? I can’t be the only one thinking that, right?”
“Like… Why would there be skulls?” Mabel asked. “Where would the skulls have come from?”
“Like… Like from all the people who’ve died here…? Like, there’s always skulls in, like, movies and stuff…” Robbie frowned, as he realized most of his expertise in the matter was coming from Arkansas Jim, King of the Jewels and Lord Ape. “Come on, you know. There’s gotta be skulls somewhere, right?”
Mabel considered this for a bit. “I don’t knoooooooow…” She said. “If anybody ever did die here, their friends would have gone looking for them and found this place. But since Dippingsauce and Wendoid were the first ones to find it, I don’t think anybody has…”
“Ugh…” Robbie glowered, and turned a shoulder. “You know you were expecting skulls.”
“Oh, hey look.” Dipper said. “A skull.”
Wendy shone her headlamp past him to inspect the find. Sure enough, there was a massive, metal skull blocking their passage, about the size of a car tire. It didn’t have nostrils, but made up for it with about a hundred eye sockets, all around its head.
Truly other-worldly.
“Well.” Wendy said. “That’s kind of weird… Why would there be a skull down here?”
“Eh…” Dipper shrugged. “Skulls are never quite where you expect them… Like, I was looking at ancient runes down in a cave one time, and I found this one giant skull with big, huge horns. It startled me so bad I dropped my light.”
“Oh yeah?” Wendy said. “I never heard that story. What happened then?”
“Oh… Uh… I… Uh… I couldn’t see, so I left the cave. That’s the whole story.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“…That’s the most pointless story ever.” She informed him. “Of all time.”
“Uh… Yeah.” Dipper shrugged. “That’s probably why I forgot all about it until just now.”
“No doubt.” Wendy crawled forward, and placed her hands on the skull. If they were to continue on, they had to get it out of the way. “Uh…” She grunted with effort as she tried to push it backwards, or pull it towards them, but it was jammed pretty tightly in the tunnel. After a minute of struggling, she managed to at least tilt it backwards slightly, and then lever its jaw open. “Oh hey!” She said, pointing to the new opening. “We can just crawl through its mouth.”
“Uh…”
“C’mon, it’s just crawling inside something dead. Nothing crazy or anything. Maggots and stuff do it all the time.”
“Well… Ladies first.”
“Ha ha, shut up man.”
They managed to fit their way through the massive jaws, and found themselves at the start of a wider, more uniform tunnel.
This new tunnel was almost circular, and tall enough that they could crawl on their hands and knees (instead of their bellies). The bottom half of it was filled with loose dirt, mud, and metal shavings, as if back when it was drilled, the excess material had all just been ground to dust and left where it sat.
“Hey, uh… Is it just me or are the walls super weird?” Wendy asked.
“Umm…” Dipper shone his light around. “Yeah, they’re pretty weird… I guess the—OH WOAH, these aren’t walls! These are ribs! Ribs and armor it looks like.”
“Oh… Yeah they are, aren’t they? Something really giant died down here.”
“Yeah. Right in the middle of cutting the tunnel I guess.”
“Huh… Well, what is it? Like a giant mole?”
“Maybe more of an Earthworm… Ish? I mean, I don’t see any legs…”
“Huh… Cool…”
On the other side of the dead creature, they found themselves starting into a labyrinth of similar tunnels. These ones weren’t lined with ribs, of course, but they were all roughly the same width. Evidently, all had been dug by the ‘worm’ creatures…
“So this is how the forest ‘rots’.” Dipper observed. “Just like we were talking about earlier. There may not be any forest fires or floods, but these giant earthworm-type-things just routinely come through and grind everything down… They’re the recycling mechanism. Turning the metal tree-trunks back into this dusty soil…”
“Fascinating.” Wendy lied.
“But I wonder what eats the worms, when they die? I’m guessing it’s something pretty small, which is why the larger structure like the ribs and skull were leftover…”
“…Man, your sister is totally right. You’re a nerd.”
“Yeah, well… Yeah.”
Since their compass didn’t work very well with so much iron around, they picked an arbitrary direction and started into the maze.
Plant and animal life seemed to flourish in the dust the worms left behind. Many of the tunnels and passages were tangled or outright blocked with roots, vines, or moss. And all around them, tiny robotic insects darted in and around the logs and plants, buzzing and beeping at the passing humans.
Eventually Wendy stopped, and Dipper halted behind her. He rubbed his sore knees as well as he could, and asked. “What’s the holdup?”
“SHH! Listen…”
Back behind them in the darkness, she’d heard motion. And now Dipper heard it too: clicking, buzzing, hissing… Dipper turned over on his butt and shone his headlamp past his feet, to see what lay back down the tunnel.
The rough metal walls had transformed into a writhing mass of sharp legs and silvery, domed shells. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of rat-sized robotic insects were crawling out of the walls, digging their sharp feet into cracks in the ceiling and floor, blinking their tiny red eyes, and scuttling toward the two humans. Tiny saws and hooks caught the light from their headlamps and reflected back at them, twinkling and glittering like stars.
“Ooh.” Wendy said.
“Augh!” Dipper said.
There are certain primal fears that are programmed very deep into every human brain. In simpler times, before man had so tamed and civilized the world around him, these fears had helped him survive. They had taught him to seek light instead of darkness. To flee from the swarming ant and poisonous spider. To respect the threat of teeth and blades. Man has retained these fears up to the modern day, and they may still be awoken when the need presents itself.
You may understand, then, why Dipper totally lost his cool when he saw these insects advancing. He kicked his legs to move away from them, and ran the back of his head directly into Wendy’s butt. “AGH!” He yelped. “The--! Bugs! Lots of bugs!”
“I’m going, I’m going…!” Wendy began to crawl faster, with Dipper immediately behind her. They were off their knees now, scrambling on their hands and feet while their armor clattered clumsily against the walls and ceiling.
For a while its seemed they were moving as fast as their pursuers, even outrunning them. But soon, even more bugs began to crawl out of the walls ahead of them, forcing them to a standstill. The enemy was everywhere. They were surrounded.
Dipper caught movement in the corner of his eye, and turned just in time to see a bug squeeze itself out of a crack right next to his head. He reached for his magnet gun, but before he’d gotten it leveled in the tiny space, the creature had launched itself forward and hooked onto his helmet’s visor. Its front legs reached past the bars and scratched savagely at his face. He fell to his back in surprise, dropped the gun, and tried to grasp the animal’s slippery, round shell long enough to pull it off. Its legs were leaving scratches on his face, and knocked his safety glasses loose.
By the time he removed this first attacker, a cut in his forehead was bleeding into his eyes, his entire head was in agony, and more bugs were climbing onto him from every direction. His heart began to race as he struggled to free himself, and he descended ever closer to complete panic…
Wendy, meanwhile, was dealing with about 15 bugs that had all hooked onto her right arm. The creatures weighed about 20 pounds all together, and the weight was making the limb almost impossible to use. She tried to smash her arm into the walls, hoping to kill the bugs or at least knock them loose. But that didn’t really work. Every time she got one off, two more would crawl back on. She could feel them tearing at the gauntlet on her arm, trying to cut it open and explore what lay beneath.
A few bugs crawled onto her back, and she forgot about her arm for a few seconds to remove them. But by the time she turned her attention back to her arm, she found that she wasn’t able to move it at all. Past the insects, she caught the glint of tiny metal cables, running from her gauntlet to the tunnel wall. More cables seemed to be appearing all the time, as the creatures moved over her, laying them down from tiny spools in their mouths.
Oh. She thought. They’re tying me down. They know they’re not big or strong enough to take me when I’m still moving, so they’re doing the only thing they can… They’re wrapping me up to eat me. Like spiders.
She managed to get her axe out of her belt using her free arm, and brought the blade down hard on the nearest insect. Its shell cracked, and it scrambled away; one less to deal with. She turned to her right arm now, and began to chop at the creatures crawling on it. One by one they scuttled off, and finally she was able to get a clear shot at the cables.
But it didn’t work. The wires were too tough for the axe. When she chopped at them, they just stretched and buckled and made a ‘thwang’ noise like guitar strings, and they didn’t break. The insects began to crawl back onto her now, making it harder and harder to concentrate on her arm. She couldn’t get it free.
Now out of options, she decided to go for the next best thing: she grabbed the latches on the gauntlet, and popped it loose.
Her naked arm came free of the armor. Now that she was able to move again, she scrambled up the tunnel and away from the threat. Behind her, the insects swarmed the gauntlet and began to eat it. Others realized what happened and turned to follow her, but only about 3 remained attached to her. She made short work of them.
She continued without hesitation. It was too bad she had to leave the piece of protection behind, but really, it was a small price to pay for survival… At least she and Dipper had both… Both…
She’s made it about ten meters up the tunnel when she suddenly froze. Wait, where was Dipper?
She looked backwards, and her light illuminated nothing but swarming masses of insects.
DANG IT!
She tucked her unprotected arm into her shirt as best she could, and started back into the fray, swinging and chopping at anything that approached. “DIPPER!” She yelled past the masses. “DIPPER ARE YOU THERE?!? ARE YOU OKAY?!?”
As for Dipper, he thrashed about in futility. His left leg had already been tied down to the wall, as had his left arm, and they were working hard on his right leg. All over, he could feel their mouth saws and hooks drilling and plucking at the armor and clothes. It didn’t hurt, not yet, but the creatures were heavy, and constantly moving, and shifting, and poking and prodding. He had a feeling that they were very close to making it past the armor. So very close…
His heart was racing, and his lungs were heaving, and he was quite a bit beyond panic at this point. Nothing was working… Nothing was working!! He’d dropped the magnet gun, and he couldn’t reach his backpack, and he couldn’t think of anything else to try, so he just squirmed and smashed with his fists and beat himself against the walls and tried to move… But nothing was working!
The creatures had already cut through his headlamp, so he now found himself in utter darkness, with nothing to see except the racing, flickering dots of light from his attackers’ eyes, and the occasional brief flashes as they welded down the ends of more webs. On top of that, the blood from his forehead was running down into his eyes and blinding him even further. The world was a confusing, chaotic blur of murderous glowing eyes, slashing knife-like legs, and tiny spinning saws. All he could hear was the scuttling and the clicking and the scratching and the drilling, all of it screaming in his ears, all of it deafening him and harassing him, pressing in savagely and unrelentingly.
His attackers were fast, strong, ubiquitous, unopposable…
There was nothing he could do!
“DIPPER!” From somewhere up ahead, he heard his name cut through the chaos. “DIPPER ARE YOU THERE?!? ARE YOU OKAY?!?”
Wendy’s voice.
“UH!!” He gasped hoarsely. “WENDY! WENDY HELP! HELP!”
A bug’s saw made it through his shirt in his armpit, and drew blood. He cranked his arm down on it, forcing it to pull out and go somewhere else. But it had left a wound.
As well as he could, he curled himself into the fetal position to shield his face, torso, and the thin parts of his gloves. His left arm and leg remained extended, tied down.
“DUDE!” She told him. “TALK TO ME!”
“I-- HELP!” He yelled. “WENDY! THEY’RE EVERYWHERE! MY LIGHT’S OUT! YOU HAVE TO HELP ME!” Another one was on his helmet now, and another was ripping at an uncomfortable part of his pants. He would have kicked it away, but he didn’t want to risk compromising his torso and face by extending a limb. “PLEASE COME!” He said.
“I CAN’T SEE YOU!” She told him. “DIPPER YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO ME! YOU HAVE THE MAGNET GUN! IT’S THE ONLY WEAPON WE HAVE TO FIGHT THEM!”
“I CAN’T! I DROPPED IT! I CAN’T SEE! I…!”
“DUDE!” Her voice suddenly snapped to a harsh, authoritative tone. “LISTEN TO ME!”
“HELP!”
“CLOSE YOUR EYES! FOCUS ON ME!” With nothing else to do, Dipper did as instructed. Now that the world was perfectly black again, it was ever-so-slightly simpler. He didn’t need his eyes anymore. All he needed was his ears and his hands. So he focused his ears. He focused them on her. He held onto her.
Once he’d pointed his brain toward this task, his breathing began to stabilize. “OH… OKAY…” He said.
“NOW!” She told him. “YOU’RE NOT GOING TO DIE!”
He wasn’t? He could feel bug’s saws breaking through the armor in places, and tangling in his shirt and pants. How long did he have? How would he not die here?
“TELL IT TO ME!” She said. “TELL ME YOU’RE NOT!”
“I’m… I’m not going to die…”
“WHAT?”
“I’M NOT GOING TO DIE!”
The bugs were nicking his skin in places. At first it was like being pricked by needles, but then it became quite a bit worse. Yet through the pain, he hung onto Wendy’s promise, and he believed her.
“YOUR GUN CAN’T HAVE GONE FAR!” She told him.
She was right. He took a deep breath, and began to un-curl from the fetal position. He knew it left his face exposed, but he remembered where the gun was. He extended his free hand down to the ground by his right side, and his palm touched the gun.
“I GOT IT!” He said.
“PICK IT UP!”
His fingers around the handle..
“FLIP IT TO PULSE!”
He flipped it to pulse.
“FIRE IT!”
The tunnel all around him lit up with blue light, and the air snapped with the sharp sound of the weapon’s electrical discharge. All the creatures that had been on him, or in his vicinity, jumped and twitched all at once.
In an instant, their red eyes all went dark. Their scratching, clawing, digging little legs stopped moving, and their tiny saws stopped spinning. The insects that had been climbing on the ceiling went limp and fell off, clattering noisily to the ground on top of the others.
Everything was dead.
Everything was dead…
Dipper shook himself, and found that, finally, his attackers were falling from his back. He was so exhausted and relieved that he just sagged to the floor and gasped for breath.
In the new silent stillness, he opened his eyes. And he saw a light shining up ahead. It was accompanied by the sound of whacking and chopping, as Wendy took out whatever enemies the pulse had missed. Then the light turned in his direction, and started towards him.
When she reached him, she set the light between them, and took off her helmet. Together, they began to work on the cables that were tying him down. The ones on his arms unhooked and snapped loose one by one, slowly but surely. The bindings on his legs were next, and those came easier. Once most of them were removed, he was able to kick loose of the last few.
Then, he was free.
He and Wendy sat back in the mud and looked at each other.
He was still partially blinded by the blood dripping down off his forehead, and by the tears he’d shed in his terror. He tried to reach a glove up underneath his visor to wipe it off, but it didn’t really fit up in there, and his glove was so covered in grit that it just added to the mess, and his hands were shaking. “Uh…” He said.
“Yeah.” She reached forward, and removed his helmet too. Then she untucked a corner of her shirt from her armor, and wiped the blood, mud and tears from his face.
He blinked, shook his head, and found he could see clearly. So he took a deep breath. Then another. Then he looked up and met her eyes.
“Hey dude.” She said.
“H-hey…”
“Your hands are shaking, dude.”
“Yeah, I…” He looked down at them. He was shook up. He could feel his heart running rampant in his chest, as if wanting to burst out. “I… I… Thanks…” He stuttered. “C-c-can I hug you?”
“Uh…” She frowned for a second. Then she shrugged, and spread her arms. “Sure, I guess…”
He fell into her, and wrapped his arms around her armored torso. “Wendy, I thought I was gonna die…!” He blurted. “I’m sorry I panicked but I dropped the gun and my light got ate and they were drilling at my privates and I couldn’t move and nothing was working and I thought I was gonna die…”
“Hey… Like, yo.” She put her arms around his shoulders, and gave him a pat. “Naw, man. We’ve been through worse than this… Gotta take more than a few robot bugs to eat US, right?”
“Ugh…”
“Right? Right.”
“I… Uh… Uh… I don’t know… I’m… I’m sorry I panicked… Thanks. Thanks for telling me what to do…”
“Hey man… It’s… Like… Fine. Usually it’s you giving orders, right? And that’s always turned out all right.”
“Uh… I guess…”
“So call this me returning the favor, huh? We help each other up when we fall. We’re there for each other. ‘Cause that’s just what friends do. Right? We got each others’ backs. No matter what.”
“Okay…” He shuddered. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey. Dude.” She terminated the hug early, and held his shoulders out at arm’s length. “You’re not gonna die today.” She told him. “You’ve got a big, bright future ahead of you. You’re gonna go to college, get some degree, get that one great job you always wanted. Something that uses your talents, something you love… You’re gonna settle down, raise a family, and do the world some serious good with that brain and that heart of yours. You’re gonna grow up to be somebody someday, you hear me? And that’s why you ain’t gonna die in a hole today. That’s not how this story ends. That’s not your future.”
“Yeah?”
“I promise.”
“…But how do you know? I could die… People die all the time…”
“Eh.” She gave him another little pat, then released him, and turned to climb up the tunnel. “Have a little faith, bro. And come on, we need to get moving.”
He shook his head, as he realized their little moment was passed. And now that the adrenaline had drained from his system, he felt his brain settle back into familiar paths. He took one final deep breath, then crawled after her. “Heh heh… Yeah.” He hazarded a joke. “We should probably be going. That was getting a little too cliché, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, well, it was the best cliché I could think up on the fly. And it’s better than the alternative.”
“…What’s the alternative?”
“That other thing coming up behind you to eat you.”
Dipper spun around.
About twenty meters back, a massive, sharp mouth was advancing up the tunnel. The mouth was filled with spinning drills, ringed by tiny red eyes, and was slowly chewing up and crushing the dead bugs they’d left behind. Dipper recognized its head shape: it must be one of the worms from earlier, only alive and well. Dipper was alarmed by its appearance at first, but then he realized it was moving at about a foot per second; a snail’s pace. It couldn’t catch them even if it wanted to, and by the looks of it, it wasn’t even interested in them. It just wanted to eat the dead stuff.
They left it to its feast, and continued on.
Now that they knew what to expect, the way was pretty smooth going. Occasionally they spotted a live bug or two in the crevices in the walls, and once the pests even tried to swarm again, but this time the humans were ready with the magnet gun, and fried them before they could become a threat. Another worm appeared out of the walls in short order to scavenge the dead ‘meat’.
By now, Dipper figured they’d put a significant distance between themselves and the lions above. They found a place where the logs above were looser, cleared some of them away using the magnet gun, and crawled their way up through the crack they’d made.
As soon as he emerged above, Dipper thankfully gulped a breath of fresh air. There wasn’t a lot of air movement or oxygen down there, and everything smelled like smoke and oils. Granted, a lot of those same smells were prevalent up here, but at least a gentle breeze was blowing some cool, fresh air in from the outside forest.
It sure was nice to be back topside.
He took the moment to adjust his armor slightly, so that it wasn’t rubbing quite as badly on the scratches and punctures the bugs had given him. Then he pulled out his map, his compass, and a granola bar again. “Okay.” He said, as he chewed. “Compass is working now… Looks like the coordinates should be… That way.”
Wendy pulled out some jerky, and took a mouthful. “Ladeys fuhsht.” She mumbled past the meat.
Dipper shook his head with a smile, and took a step forward.
“So, like, I know drummers are supposed to be the dumb ones, but did he really have to act the part right in front of—”
“Ooh!!” Mabel saw something up ahead, and brazenly interrupted whatever Robbie had been trying to say. “A robot squirrel!”
“Lame.” Robbie corrected her.
She tried to catch it, but the squirrel fired its booster and launched off towards the top of a nearby tree before she could catch it. “ROBOT ROCKET SQUIRREL!” Mabel clarified. “You rock, robot rocket squirrel!”
“Almost as lame.” Robbie crossed his arms, and adjusted the straps on his backpack. Mabel’s little ‘collection’ was starting to get quite heavy. “So…” Robbie said. “Like, what’s the big plan, or… Like… Whatever…?”
“Well…” Mabel said. “I don’t know quite yet… But I think for now, we should get a sample of all the plants and animals and stuff, and load them into your van… You know, like Noah’s ark! Your van can be Noah’s ark! Then we can bring them somewhere else… I can plant a garden… Use iron filings for fertilizer… Everything will grow big and beautiful, and pretty soon the whole yard will be smelling like industrial lubricant!”
One of the smaller bugs Mabel had collected crawled out of Robbie’s backpack and onto his face. “Like… That’s stupid but okay…” Robbie groaned, as he carefully plucked it off with his thumb and forefinger. He was about to flick it into the bushes, then thought better of it, and returned it to the backpack. “But… Like… Where are we putting all the stuff today?”
They happened upon a creek: the same one from Dipper and Wendy’s first visit. Mabel stopped to pluck a thermoelectric solar flower from the streambed, and tucked it into her hair. “Well… I’ve got a place picked out…” She said. “Like, a secret storage sort of place. We can put these things there until I save up enough money to buy a… I don’t know, like a moving van… To take them to California… Or… Maybe to NASA… Or… Harvard or something… Someplace where there’s lots of smart people, where nobody knows where they’re from, but where everybody will love and respect because they’re amazing and beautiful.”
“Maybe… Like… The US government would buy them.” Robbie suggested. “You know, to turn them into weapons. Like, bulletproof hunting dogs… Or they could reprogram the big ones to give birth to tanks… Or, like, they just toss a bunch of robo-moss at terrorists or whatever and crap starts growing on their guns and cars and stuff… And then they can’t… Like… Use any of their stuff, or whatever… And then we could bomb them and they couldn’t fight back.”
“What…? Don’t talk like that!” Mabel squealed. “They aren’t weapons!”
“Yeah, well, neither are rusty screwdrivers, but guess what?”
“Umm…” Mabel frowned. “I can’t guess. What?”
“Ain’t you heard of a shiv? It’s what people in prison use rusty screwdrivers for when they’re cranky or insane.”
“Fixing rusty things…?” Mabel scratched her head.
“No, stabbing people!”
“WHAT? EWW! ROBBIE!” Mabel covered her ears.
“I don’t make this stuff up!” Robbie said. “I just repeat it back in a snarky tone. The fact is, girl, that people are buttheads and jerks. If these robot whatevers aren’t useful to them, they’ll be afraid of them and destroy them. And if they are useful… They’ll weaponize them. It’s just the way it is. Fact is: dangerous things never have happy endings. Trust me.”
“Hmm…” The spring left Mabel’s step. “Well…” She said. “I guess we’ll put them in storage for now… And then we’ll think about it for a real long time. Will you think with me, Robbie?”
“Huh?”
“Do you promise to think really hard about what we should do?”
“Uh… Okay. Fine. Yeah. I’ll think…” He adjusted the straps again, but had a hard time thinking about anything besides how heavy the pack was. “But, like, why do you care about any of this stuff at all?”
Mabel looked at him. “We just… We just do…”
McGucket finished a third coat of alien adhesive, gave the last bolt one final tug, and then the machine was finished.
He piled his tools and equipment back into a toolbox, and closed it with finality. Then he reached for a control panel on his belt, and boosted the power on his robo-pants, enough to tripple his lower-body strength. With this new power, he grabbed his latest creation, stood to his feet with a great effort, and managed to walk it over to a tripod.
He mounted it to the top, and turned it to face the opposite end of his lab, where he’d placed an old, rusted car. He then pulled out a roll of cable, plugged one end into the machine, and ran the other end off to his computer. On the computer, he booted up the test program.
He pressed a button. ‘INITIALIZING’ The computer announced.
The machine began to make noises. Clicking and buzzing from the charging electromagnets. Whirring and hissing from the superheating hydrogen fuel. A little puttering from the compressor. The pressure and temperature gauges on the computer both began to steadily climb, and he waited a minute or two for them to fill all the way to red line. Finally, the machine emitted a loud beeping noise, and it was ready for ignition.
He pressed another button. ‘IGNITING’ Appeared on the screen.
The machine released a microscopic jet of the superheated hydrogen, and fired a tiny, focused laser into the stream. The sharp ‘bang’ of fusion ignition rang through the shop. A bright and miniscule spark, the heat of a star, began to glow in the machine’s front tip. The machine’s cooling system started up, to counteract the spark’s heat.
A green light lit up on his computer: NUCLEAR FUSION PILOT LIGHT IGNITED. WARNING: RELEASE BEAM WITHIN 45 SECONDS OR RISK OVERHEAT.
He checked all the readouts. Everything was looking good by his reckoning, so he picked up his computer, walked over to a bulletproof shield, and ducked down behind it. For comfort, he clutched his raccoon under one arm, a fire extinguisher under the other, and hugged them close. The raccoon hissed in confusion.
With his foot, McGucket reached over and pressed the last button.
‘PLASMA BEAM ENGAGED.’
More fuel was sent through the multi-million-degree pilot light, and the magnets directed the ionized gas out of the machine and toward the old car.
The entire lab lit up with the bright pink light, accompanied by a sound like thunder, and a brief, furious blast of warm air. It was all over in less than a second, leaving nothing more than some billowing dust, and a ringing in McGucket’s ears. The raccoon squirmed fearfully in his arms, so he released it, and let it flee the room to safety. As for himself, he shook his head to clear the shock, and blinked down at the computer. ‘TEST SUCCESSFUL’ it said.
He timidly stepped from behind the shield, with his fire extinguisher at the ready.
Nothing seemed amiss. The machine was still working and intact, the lab’s walls and floor were undamaged, and fortunately, nothing much had been lit on fire. As for the target, however…
McGucket’s eyes strayed across the lab to the old car. Its entire passenger-side door was burned and blackened, and directly in the center was a hole. A 2-centimeter-wide hole that made it straight through the car, and over 10 centimeters into the wall behind it.
I did it. McGucket thought. After all these long years of thinking, dreaming, and imagining… I finally did it.
I got me a death ray.
He glanced over at the blueprints, scattered over one of his workbenches. They explained and measured every detail of the invention, and would probably be worth millions of dollars to any of his usual military contacts.
He took the prints and burned them.
Then he took the machine itself, unplugged it, and drained its fuel. Then he hoisted it off the tripod and into an unmarked crate, and nailed it securely shut. To make sure nobody would get curious, he wrote ‘Scalp Hair Sample Collection VHS’ on top. Then he pushed that crate back into the furthest corner of his workshop, covered it in a filthy tarp, and stacked some other junk on top of it.
This latest machine wasn’t for selling.
And it wasn’t for using.
It was just for having.
Just in case.
It was such a tangled, overgrown mess that they didn’t notice it at first.
Dipper and Wendy stood at the alien coordinates, glancing at the map, glancing at the compass, glancing at the landmarks around them, and turning slowly in circles.
So… They were here!
So what’s here?
Wendy unslung her belt, tossed it around a nearby tree, and used it to scale straight up the trunk. Dipper watched from the ground, wondering if he’d ever have the upper arm strength to master that trick.
When she reached the lowest branch, Wendy startled a robot monkey, which hissed at her and swung off to a higher branch. “Yeah, same to you.” She grunted at the creature, and stepped onto the tree limb.
“Hey, see anything?” Dipper called up.
“Uh…” She looked all around, seeing nothing much at all. Perhaps whatever ‘fortifications’ that ‘Betty and Barney’ mentioned had aged and decayed away. Perhaps there was nothing here anymore…
But then Wendy looked down at her friend. And she saw that he was standing in the middle of a strange clearing; a wide, circular hump in the forest floor, wherein no trees were growing, but only small shrubbery and moss. The shape was about 25 meters wide (a little bigger than your everyday fighter jet). There was a steeper, rounder sort of hump in the center of the hump, and one end of the entire shape seemed to be lifted up slightly, as if it something beneath were sitting crooked. “Hey…” She called down. “If I had a nickel for every time I found out I was standing on a buried UFO…”
“Huh?” Dipper looked down. “Oh…! Well… Hey. How ‘bout that.”
“Yeah.” Wendy shrugged. “I mean, I know 10 cents isn’t a lot of money, but… It’s just weird that it happened twice, right?”
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Comments: 2
And I'm back and catching up...
The picture gets 10/10 from me. It perfectly captures the moment from the chapter, the recent intense battle and need for some comfort. And yeah, only in Gravity Falls can you find an ancient buried UFO twice.
Old Man McGucket has a death ray and I have concerns. I'm sure it'll come to play some part but I dread to think what.
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Thanks! Yeah, it’s one of my favorite scenes in general.
What if I told you the death ray ALREADY played a part?
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