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Chapter 24: Dragon's Lair

Author’s Note: This was an interesting picture to draw. I knew I wanted to very clearly show the creepiness of the skeletons on the wall behind the characters, but I also wanted to clearly show the shifters' shadows, and have them look like actual, real shadows (clear, stark shadows are hard with pencil, doubly so when something else is happening behind them). So to accomplish the task well, I actually just drew the outlines of the shadows on the paper before I drew the background, and scanned that into the computer. Then I erased the shadows on the paper, drew the background, and scanned it again. That way, I could use gimp to shade in the shadows from the first scan, and layer them on top of the second scan. Now, ta-da! Realistic-looking shadows.

And one of the shadows is hideous and monstrous because symbolism.

Also, if you're wondering where I get names for my time-OCs, it's easy! All you have to do is take real names and add sci-fi suffixes to them, like 'oid' or 'icus' or 'ulor' or 'ite', resulting in things like Jamesulor and Bobite. See? Perfect future-y names. I used the names of my two Grandpas, John Reich and Craig Martinson... But you don't know what I'm talking about yet, so, uh... Read on, I guess.

Time:
3680 B.C., October 3rd (Long ago, 1 month after the crash of Colonial Vessel 46.18’\.)

Two solitary armored figures stood on the crest of the hill, looking out across the valley.
One of them was speaking into a headset. “This is Time-Lieutenant Craigoid and Time-Officer Johnicus reporting in. Come in, time-dispatch. Time-dispatch, do you read?”
The time-communicator warbled with static as it linked with the future. “This is Time-Dispatch, we read you loud and clear, Officer. What seems to be the time-issue? Over.”
Craigoid’s eyes swept the landscape. In his peripheral vision, his partner’s hand nervously twitched on the handle of his laser arm cannon; the boy had never been on a mission like this before, and wasn’t coping too well. “Well, dispatch…” Craigoid started. “Do you remember learning about that giant UFO that crashed in Southwest Canada?”
“Ahh… Yeah, didn’t they unearth that sometime in the 22nd century?”
“Yeah, that’s the one… Well… My partner and I just found ourselves at the landing site back in 3680 B.C., and it looks like the vehicle has just recently crashed. Fires are still burning, radiation off the charts… We’re thinking there might be survivors. Permission to enter the wreck and administer aid? Over.”
“Ah, that’s a negative, Lieutenant. 3680 B.C. is well outside our department’s jurisdiction. What are you even doing back then anyway? Over.”
“Got an anonymous tip about an accelerated improbability field. And I am getting some weird readings here; looks like some of the vehicle’s engines might still be active. Over.”
“Hmm… This could be sensitive then. Return back to present day immediately, and we’ll weigh options then. Over.”
Lieutenant Craigoid turned off his time-communicator with a dissatisfied grunt, and cast another look back at the crashed ship.
The enormous curved hull arched ominously above the two time-cops, shining in the early morning sun with the tarnished gleam of yielded titanium. Miles behind it, the force of the crash had carved a giant spacecraft-shaped chunk out of the cliffs. All around, massive rubble and chunks of earth and rock lay scattered, as if tossed by a shovel. The bare patches of blasted land had yet to sprout any sort of grass or vegetation, and the nearby river was still running brown with the great volumes of displaced soil. Part of the wreck appeared to be below this waterline, and thus would probably be flooded inside. The hull itself was pockmarked with holes and craters, with the occasional chunk of paneling missing entirely. Some gaps spewed smoke, which bore the strange smell of burning plastics.
Craigoid focused his cyborg eye to try and take a detailed scan of the wreck, but the hull was too thick; thermal and x-ray imaging came up negative. The only way to see inside would be to explore it in person…
He cast a glance back at his young partner. “I’m going in, Johnicus.” He told him.
“But sir, time-dispatch sa—!”
“Time-dispatch says a lot of things, kid. Think about it; what if we didn’t check it out? Everybody higher-up would be perfectly happy to just sweep it all under a rug, ‘cause of course the emperor doesn’t have the attention span to deal with it… If anything’s to be done, we’re the ones to do it… And besides, what they don’t know won’t time ‘em…” He turned off his time-locator. “I’m just going for a quick look. Just to see if there’s anyone… Or anything left alive. You be sure and call it in if anything goes timeways; You can tell ‘em it was my idea.”
“Well…! Well, it could be pretty time-dangerous, sir! Shouldn’t we be more careful sir?”
“Kid…” He gave his partner a stern look. “If we were that careful during… The War… Then your generation wouldn’t have been born. It’s a fact. I checked.”
“You’re always talking about ‘The War’.”
“You’re a good kid, kid…” He whipped out his laser cannon, and started for what looked like an entrance. “Stay here kid, I couldn’t stand if something happened to you. I’ll be out in a time-minute.”
“But sir—”
“Oh, calm down, kid. I’ve handled far worse back in… The War.”
“You…! Never mind. Nothing.”
The Time-Lieutenant disappeared into the wreck. Time-Officer Johnicus stared after him for a few minutes, then sighed and sat down on a nearby rock. After nervously studying his boots for a few minutes, he stood back up with a determined frown. That’s it. He thought. The Time-Lieutenant can’t just keep doing crazy things like this. And if I can’t stop him, then at least I’ll stop him from doing it alone. I’m going in after him. He pulled out his arm cannon, charged its capacitors, and followed Craigoid down into the depths.
It quickly became too dark to see, so he switched on the cyborg implants in his right eye to get a thermal view. It definitely helped, even if it didn’t give very good depth perception.
After a minute or so of walking, the featureless metal hallway split off into a great number of passages and rooms. Which way did he go? It’s like a maze…
Well, he couldn’t just ask. The Time-Lieutenant was always on him about useless radio chatter (After all, they never chatted during The War.) So Johnicus took an educated guess at where he would have gone, and started down the middle path, directly for the center of the wreck.
The last outside light faded behind him, and the radiation and heat were getting steadily worse. Soon he was beginning to worry that his combat armor might not be enough to keep him safe. It was timetanium mesh weave, but enough radiation can get through anything, and besides, the suit still left his face uncomfortably exposed. This rig was for riot control, not environmental shielding…
He was about to turn back when his time-communicator beeped with the voice of the Time-Lieutenant himself. He couldn’t make out any words, but the voice sounded frantic. The transmission cut off after a few seconds, and somewhere far up ahead, Johnicus heard the sound of a laser cannon discharge. The color drained from his face. “Uh…!” He stuttered. “Uh! Uh, HANG ON TIME-LIEUTENANT! I’M COMING!” He began to sprint forward, his heart racing. What if something was really wrong? What if he’s actually in trouble? What do I do? How do I help? And what should I tell time-dispatch…?
Oh yeah, time-dispatch! I should really just call this in now…
But before he could stop to phone it in, he saw the Time-Lieutenant’s body lying in the hall ahead of him. Forgetting all else, he rushed up and bent over him. “SIR!” He yelped. “Sir, are you okay?”
“Eh…? Kid…? Oh… Thank Time you’re alright, kid. I put up a stiff fight, but that time time-timed mother-timing timehole got away, and I think my time-leg’s busted… You’re gonna have to go on without me, kid. Tell the Time-Major it was an honor serving with him… Tell Time-Officer Lolph he still owes me synevety credits… And my wife… Tell her she was always a crooked old hag, and I’m glad to be rid of her… No, don’t tell her that, it’ll break her heart… No, do tell her that. With any luck, it’ll break her heart…”
“No, I’m gonna get you out of here sir! Come on, put your time-arm around me, and we can—”
Then a lot of things seemed to happen all at once. Before he knew it, Johnicus was lying on the floor too. His time-communicator was shattered, his laser gun was missing, his cyborg eye had a hole in it, he was pretty sure his right arm was broken, and the Lieutenant was strangely still and silent. Oh time-dang it…! What happened? What… No… I need… I need to get us out of here. I need to time-travel… Got to reach… His shaking hand fumbled toward his belt, and landed on his time machine. I just have to pull the control tape. Get us back to civilized times, and somebody will find us. Just need-
A claw reached out of the perfect darkness, and grabbed his wrist. The grip was astoundingly strong, and its skin felt moist. Then another claw reached into his captured fist, and plucked the time machine away from him.
“H-hey! Give that back--!” He stuttered helplessly into the darkness. “Uh! I mean…! You’re under time-arrest in the name of the Time Paradox Avoidance Enforcement Squadron! Stand down and nobody gets…! Gets…!”
Something hit him hard on the head, and he knew no more.

Time:
2013 A.D., June 12th (Present day.)

Somehow, the Shapeshifter had gotten free of Ford’s bunker. Somehow, he’d been impersonating Robbie all week and nobody had noticed. For some reason, he’d named himself ‘Sam’. And somehow, he’d found his way down into the alien ship, and to the exact place where his mother had once prowled. Somehow, ‘Sam’ had found his way back home.
And somehow, thousands of years after his mother must have been dead… She was alive.
Yeah, there’s a lot of mysteries left. But none of them really matter all that much. Wendy thought. All that matters is that this dear family has finally been reunited, after all these long, hard years apart. Aww! That’s so sweet!
Actually, that’s not what she was thinking.
She was really thinking: NOPE.
Nope. While the two monsters had their attention on each other, she began to discretely back away. Nope. Her eyes drifted across the security drones floating around the room. They all seemed to be focusing on her… Not attacking, but it was probably only a matter of time. Nope. She looked around the room itself. The walls were covered in grotesque skeletons from all manner of species, stretched out by their arms, plastered in place by spider-like webs. These are everyone who’s ever crossed her… Hate to say it, but some of ‘em look just a tad tougher than me. Wendy’s hand touched the wall behind her, and she felt her way back to the passage where she’d come from, never taking her eyes of the shifters. Nope. Her eyes lingered on the small, fist-sized yellow machine Momma Shifter clutched in her right hand. If that is what I think it is… She finally found the opening in the wall, turned toward it, and began to sprint into the darkness. One hand fumbled out her flashlight, and the other pulled a second ray gun out of her belt. NopenopenopenopenopeNOPE.
Just before she passed out of sight, she stopped, and pointed the weapon back at them. The beam isn’t all that powerful, so I gotta shoot ‘em in the head this time. But which one to shoot first? She took aim. Momma Shifter knows this ship better than ‘Sam’, so she’d be harder to escape from. Plus, she apparently has control of the security system. I shoot her, then I shoot him as fast as I can. But whatever I do, it needs to happen quickly, before something worse happens.
She pulled the trigger. Two green beams spat from the weapon’s tip.
But it was too late, because something worse was already happening.

Time:
2013 A.D., June 12th (Present day, a couple seconds before the last paragraph.)

So.
His mother was a thin little woman, as far as the definition could stretch. Shorter than himself, and narrower across the shoulders. Her 4 legs were longer, and their 6 tips seemed sharper. Her arms were more symmetrical, and their fingers looked stronger. The pale mucus layer across her body wasn’t transparent, as his was. It seemed cloudy, and swirling, and active. As if even though she’d reverted to her true form, she’d never really relaxed. Never let her muscle cells go limp. Always optimizing her body. Always focusing, always preparing, brewing and stewing, hiding something inside.
And as for her face…
He’d never had any experience interpreting the expressions and body language of his own people. But to him, her face seemed hard… Not loving like he’d hoped, not relieved at seeing her son, not happy or warm like a mother should be… But not hateful, or cold, or distant, or cruel either… Just hard. As if she were already insane, but could not be driven insane. As if already dead, but could not be killed. As if already unspeakably evil, but could not be corrupted. As if nothing he would ever do could ever even make her blink. He got a feeling that if he ever laid a hand on her, ever crossed her, ever even looked at her wrongly, he would instantly just fall down dead… Without cause, without reason, just dead…
The bodies on the wall seemed like they were looking at him. Warning him with their silent, toothy smiles and their hollow, empty stares to flee from this place and never return. He tried not to look at them.
His mother’s narrow red eyes rotated slowly in their sockets, as they looked him slowly up and down. He blinked, and wondered if he should have. His claw fidgeted at its side, and he told it to hold still. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, because he dared not speak.
These aren’t ordinary feelings to have towards mothers…
After a quiet and bone-chilling moment of inspection, her body began to shift. She transformed into something that looked like a human with a fish tail, and made a strange series of chirping, whistling noises, like a porpoise. Then fell silent, waiting for him to respond.
He frowned, not sure what that meant or what he should say back.
She transformed into something large and hairy, (called a ‘Gremloblin’, if he remembered correctly), and made a growling, roaring noise.
He didn’t know what that meant either.
She took the form of a human woman, with a pronounced jaw, a heavy forehead, and clothing crudely made of animal fur. This new form made a noise like grunting and hooting.
Was that some kind of language? He didn’t recognize a single word.
The next form was a human woman too, and the noise definitely words. Not English words, but it was certainly supposed to mean something. He just didn’t know what. The human looked Native-American.
The next human looked very Asian, and he didn’t know that language either.
This process repeated a few times. A few different humans, a few different ethnicities. African. European. Middle-eastern. A few others he couldn’t place. Always they spoke some language he’d never heard.
Finally there was a lengthy pause, and she returned to her true form. “No?” She asked, her actual voice level, quiet, and not quite casual. “Nothing? Just English?”
Oh. He realized. It was a test. A test I must have failed… “No.” He frowned. “Just… English.”
“Hmm.” She considered him for a moment longer. Then she took a step toward him.
He almost felt intimidated enough to take a step back.
She came right up, and walked in a slow circle around him, her eyes drinking in every detail. She looked into his eyes, inspected his teeth, curiously regarded his misshapen right arm. Then she raised one of her hands. The claw on the end shifted into what looked like a tiny knife.
The blade darted forward and left a tiny cut in the shoulder. He jumped not quickly enough, and bit his tongue to keep from crying out. A tiny dribble of green blood ran down his arm, while the wound itself closed up and healed over quickly.
His mother’s knife shifted back into a finger, and there was a drop of his own blood on the end. She licked it off, and was silent for a minute as she rolled it around on her tongue, tasting every chemical, every hormone, every strand of DNA.
Finally she spoke again.
“Disappointing.”
The work hung in the air for a minute.
“What do you mean…?”
“Your taste.” She pointed to her mouth with a little grimace. “Your flesh has fallen into familiar patterns, lost its potential, and its versatility. And your mind…” She pointed toward his head. “You are not nearly paranoid enough, not nearly observant, deceptive, or clever enough…”
“I…? What…?”
She pointed to a faint mark on his chest. “How about this? What caused this?”
He looked down. He thought the scar would have disappeared by now, but apparently nothing had escaped her scrutiny… “That’s—” He began.
“Knife, sword, spear?” She interrupted. “No… Axe. A human weapon. And it isn’t very deep, so a weak human at that. Something small and pathetic, something overeager and overconfident, something you should have been able to kill in an instant. And it wasn’t in your back either, so that means you were facing this enemy. At close range. You. Lost. A fight. Like that.”
“Well—”
“Am I wrong?”
He could feel himself growing angry. “…You’re… Right…” He managed to growl.
“And I couldn’t help but notice…” She gestured back toward her ghastly wallpaper. “You’ve been glancing at my little collection rather frequently… As if they horrify you… So that tells me you’ve never even killed anyone before… Have you.”
He licked his teeth slowly. “…No…”
“And you don’t have any money. And you don’t have any tools. You don’t have friends in high places, or plans, or expertise or special skills, or anything at all that could be of use… Do you.”
He frowned silently.
“Sam.” A quiet sound, somewhere between a growl and a sigh, rumbled up from her throat. “…Why did you waste your life?”
He stared at his mother, aghast.
All this time. All this expectation, all this yearning for his people, for his family, for somebody to share his burden, for a friend to be there for him… All his life of pain, and this was his reward? To be told that everything he’d ever done was grossly insufficient…?
A single thought rose up in his mind, and overpowered his fear: How dare she?
“…Is that how it is?” He growled. “I… I can be anyone. I can do anything, learn anything, mimic anyone… That’s how I got here… I got here… I found you. I fought tooth and nail my entire childhood to get free of my prison, I’ve learned music and science and deception in the week I’ve been free, and now you’re telling me I should have learned languages by now? Telling me that my shapeshifting skills, which have always been sufficient as far as they depend on me, aren’t good enough?”
She didn’t visibly react, although her eyes may have narrowed just a touch.
“…Stanford Pines, the man who found me, he never stopped poking and prodding. Never stopped feeding me beans, never let me learn, never let me know who I was… And I never saw the sun. Or the surface, or this ship, or any of my own people, or anything at all beyond my CAGE…
“He found my egg in 1979. That’s thirty-four years ago. Thirty-four years where I knew you were dead because you never came for me; never rescued me. But now that you’re alive, it just invites questions: where were you? WHY was I ALONE? Why did you let me SUFFER?!? WHAT…” He took a step toward her, raised his hand to strike her in the face. “WHAT KIND OF MOTHER ARE YOU?!?”
Less than halfway through his swing, she transformed her fist into a club made of 2-inch-long-throns, which she used to jab him in the stomach hard enough to pierce his organs. His own blow never connected, as he doubled over in pain, leaving his head exposed. She turned her other fist into solid bone, enlarged the muscles on that arm, and swung it at his head.
His scull cracked nearly in two. He quickly liquefied it, shifted it back into place, and re-hardened it again. (Which removed the injury, but did nothing for the raging headache.) Blood continued to pour internally and externally from the dozen gouges in his stomach, though they were healing quickly.
Before he’d even gotten his wits about him, he felt enormous clawed hands grasp his shoulders, and lift him off the ground. He opened his eyes to behold an honest-to-goodness dragon, like something out of a fairy tale, or a nightmare. Its monstrous leathery, clawed wings, almost too large for the confines of the room, spread over the scene, while its warm breath and coal-orange eyes bore down at him from amid the jagged purple scales. Its spear-like tail curled threateningly, much too close to his back.
“Hmm.” His mother’s voice chuckled from between the jagged teeth. “The humans have gotten to you.” She told him. Her voice was cold now. Very, very cold. “To the humans.” She continued. “A ‘mother’ is a mentor, a teacher, a helper. This is because they are WEAK… They cannot learn on their own. They cannot mature or grow or conquer on their own. But WE, my son… WE are STRONG. You are right; we can learn anything. We can become anything. We can become great; it is in our nature to make of ourselves what we will… That is why I never named you, Sam. Because you don’t need me holding your hand. When you were ready, you would name yourself. You would become yourself! …I trusted you to become yourself!”
The dragon dropped him on the floor. Its scales blurred and paled, its limbs shrunk and thinned, and the entire massive beast collapsed back into the shape of his mother, standing in the exact same position that she had been before he struck at her.
He struggled slowly to his feet, with no more words to say.
“I don’t need to explain myself to you.” She told him. “…But since you asked: I left you for Dr. Pines on purpose. So that you could kill him.”
“I…” Sam grunted shallowly. The pain in his stomach was still incredible, assisted healing or no. It would definitely leave quite a scar. “I… I was SMALL…!” He managed to gasp in protest.
“You were WEAK!” She corrected him, and almost spat out the last word. “If you were truly STRONG, you could have taken the form of a fast and slippery worm, climbed your way down his throat, and split him open from the inside. Or waited until his back was turned, and wrapped yourself around his neck? Bite him with venom? Gouge out his eyes? There are innumerable methods to get the best of a larger creature.
“Why didn’t you kill him for his scientific knowledge, kill his partner for his mechanical knowledge, take the place of his brother the globe-trotting vagabond for his worldly knowledge, ally yourself with the demon himself, and earn yourself a spot as a ruler of the universe? Grow prestigious among all manner of beings, amassing power and wealth and glory to rival all lesser life…! But instead you squander the fertile ground that I gave you… And then have the audacity to tell me I did nothing…”
He stared at her for a good long while, in silent, dumbstruck horror.
They thought I was twisted. He thought, as he took a step back. They thought I was evil. They thought I was a monster… Heck, I even thought so myself… But now I meet her… I guess everything’s relative…
No…
No, she’s right.
Nothing’s relative at all.
There is no good. There is no evil.
There is only strength and weakness… It’s like I’ve always known deep down: love, care, friendship, peace, and all the things I’ve longed for… They don’t matter. They don’t buy anything, they don’t do any good…
She’s right. I did adopt the human’s beliefs. I sought after feeling and happiness, whilst caring nothing for the singular virtue of power. And because I was not monstrous enough, because I was not evil or twisted enough, because I was too jaded, too hesitant, too cowardly… I gave up my strength.
I sacrificed everything that could I have made me great. I lost…
He clenched his fists, and hung his head like a rebuked dog.
I understand now… I understand…
His mother suddenly changed the subject, and pointed behind him. “Who’s your little friend?”
He sighed silently, and glanced over his shoulder at the place where Wendy Corduroy had been standing moments ago. “Oh… That’s… Hmm… Where’d she go? The dragon must have scared her off…”
“Her? I don’t think so…” His mother retorted. “Better question: why didn’t you disarm her?”
“I uh… I did… I destroyed that ray gun of hers…”
“Congratulations on that.” His mother hissed sarcastically. “But did you know she also had a second one hidden on her person somewhere? Along with two axes, 4 knives, a flare gun, a lighter, a can of pepper spray, and whatever this is?” Her hand opened to reveal the small pile of items she’d just described.
“No…?”
“5 minutes ago, she shot us both in the head.” His mother dropped Wendy’s gear on the floor, and once again twirled the little yellow machine she’d been holding this entire time. “And you died. All because of your negligence; forgetful enough to take eyes off your enemy for even a moment… You should have at least moved your brain out of your head, instead of leaving it in the one place where anybody would be sure to aim…”
“I… Huh?” He glanced confusedly about the room, looking for his misplaced enemy. And what was this about dying? She made it sound like it had already happened…
He finally located Wendy; she was webbed to the wall with all the other bodies. Arms and legs stretched out, mouth covered up tight, perfectly helpless… How the heck did she get there?
“Do you know what this is?” He turned back to his mother in confusion, and saw her holding up the little machine for him to inspect.
“No…” He frowned.
“I wanted you to come back worthy.” She lowered her voice. “Perhaps that’s one way you’re right about mothers… We all want to see our children grow up to be something, we all want the best for them, and are disappointed when they fail… I don’t want to let my only son go to waste. I do want you to be great, Sam… And if you’re too weak to ever be of use to me, perhaps the only way is to offer you a fresh start… Here.”
She tossed him the machine.
He looked down at it. It was a fist-sized yellow and black box, with a few buttons on the top, a belt clip on the back, and a symbol like an hourglass on the front. There was also a little tab sticking off the bottom, and he pulled it. The tab extended off, trailing a numbered ribbon behind it… Was this a tape measure…? Wait… It didn’t have inches or centimeters on it… It had times. Minutes. Hours. Days. Years… Centuries… Millenia… As he pulled the tape out further, the machine itself began to emit a quiet whine, like the starting of a tiny engine. The symbol began to glow a bright blue.
Then he remembered a story he’d overheard from Wendy this morning, and it fell into place.
“It’s a time machine…” He realized.
“The only gift you’ll ever get from mommy.” She said. “Take it away, use it well… And don’t show your face here again, not until you’re STRONG. Come back...” She casually gestured toward a small pile of gold sitting in one corner of her cave. “When you’re rich,” She indicated the security drones hovering about the room, waiting on her command to strike. “When you’re powerful,” She morphed her face rapidly through an innumerable number of faces, forms, and appearances, as if shuffling cards. “When you know every language, have read every book, taken every class, when you’re smart enough to match me and man enough to no longer need me,” She pointed to the wreckage of the ship around them. “When you know how to help me fix this heap of scrap, and are ready to meet your people…” She pointed to the bodies. “And when every single one of your enemies is GONE… Only then do you have my permission to return.”
He looked at the machine. Then at Wendy. Then at his mother.
He locked eyes with her, and held her gaze in silence for a moment. And he realized that he hated her just a bit. Maybe more than a bit. He hated her enough that he wanted to make her proud. Hated her enough to force her to eat her words, make her recant the belittling things she’d said, make her grovel before him, prove that he was equal to her, and better than equal. We will meet back here when I am through. He silently promised her. When I am your superior in the world of monsters. When the virtues of my strength exceed yours. When all my enemies are gone.
So he pulled out the time machine’s control tape, pressed the ‘backward’ button, and released.
With a blinding flash of blue light, he disappeared.

This is probably how bugs feel. Wendy thought. After they’ve gotten themselves all tangled in a spider’s web, and sit waiting for the beast itself to take notice of them, and come to eat.
Well, no… Bugs probably don’t feel exactly like this. Bugs have pretty thick exoskeletons, so the hard little fibers of the web probably aren’t as uncomfortable. And bugs don’t have very good eyesight, so they probably wouldn’t have to suffer the suspense of seeing the spider sitting there, biding her time. And spiders don’t gag their prey, so bugs wouldn’t be quite so preoccupied with chewing and spitting all the sticky gunk out of their mouths.
And, of course, bugs are much too dumb to actually understand what was happening to them. They don’t sit and stare at the spider and quietly rage, think and plot their methods of escape, and ponder the consequences of the situation.
Wendy was no bug.
As she silently hung there, she thought.
So time travel is a thing. A very real, very effective thing, and now Sam can go anywhere or anytime he wants. Where would he go first? What’ll he do?
…Well…
If he can go to the past, and if his mom already had it for a long time in the past, the REAL question is what has ALREADY been done…?

Time:
2013 A.D., June 8th (4 days before the present, the day of the death of Dipper Pines. Chapter 18.)

As he stepped forward, he knew he wasn’t ready.
He didn’t really know how to find a robot’s weak points. Didn’t really know how to stay in her blind spots. Wasn’t really sure how to dodge her saws. Didn’t know how fast she could move, injured as she was. He didn’t really know how fast he could move himself, weighed down as he was with armor. Wasn’t positive whether he could keep Wendy safe, unconscious as she was.
Heck, he didn’t even know how to use this axe.
He wasn’t ready.
Then again, he never was.
Never stopped me before.
And thus did the duel begin.
It lasted mere minutes. Wretched, racing, wordless, wild minutes, whose seconds seemed to stretch on for an eternity of surging desperation. He distracted the beast enough to lead it away from Wendy, and kept out of its reach for the most part. He’d even used the chainsaw chaps to gum up all but one of her saws, so that her means of attack was limited to her remaining saw and the claws on her forelegs. She seemed to be getting tired after so long dragging her own weight around, and was slowing down…
And as for Dipper himself… Nothing but flesh wounds. Some worse than others, some bleeding pretty bad, but nothing deeper than skin, no broken bones. He could still walk, still move all his appendages. And his thundering heart and adrenaline-filled mind kept him upright and focused, forgetting their own troubles until some less-desperate moment. As human bodies tend to do in such situations.
Then it happened; he scored his first step towards real victory. He’d jumped onto the creature’s back, and when she found that she couldn’t reach her forelegs up far enough to grab him off, she’d rolled over to crush him. At the last second, he’d shoved the axe into a chink in her armor, and jumped clear. Her own weight drove the axe in deep, and 2 things snapped. One of them was the axe’s handle, the other was something crucial inside her.
And now the two combatants lay not 6 feet from each other, ankle deep in the cool water of the creek. Him gasping for breath, and her with completely paralyzed hind legs.
Yes… YES!
That would buy him enough time to run back and get his magnet gun, and stun her harmless… Then… Well… They weren’t too far from the Mystery Shack, so Ford or somebody would probably get here before long and finish her off for good…
Actually, no… No, there was no need to finish her off. He could see it now: she was already dying. Some surge in her neck was sparking and hissing with electricity, frying her nerves a dozen at a time, and wasting whatever energy she had left… And volumes of black, living oil oozed and trickled from her every injury, pooling on the surface of the water, being carried away… Her power and her blood, both draining.
Her one red eye was flickering ever darker, losing its glow, losing its life…
Dipper staggered to his feet and looked down at her.
I… He barely dared to think it. I won… I beat you… I saved Wendy… I WON!
The thought threatened to break his focus, but he knew he had to press his advantage now; had to go get the magnet gun. Had to get Wendy to safety. Had to get his injuries looked at. No time to celebrate, not while there still remained some faint chance of something worse happening.
But it was too late, because something worse was already happening.

The world slowed to a stop. The birds stopped singing. The bees stopped flying. The trees stopped swaying. The water stopped rippling. The wind stopped blowing. Even the very soundwaves in the air halted in their travels, and the lightspeed constant dropped to about 80 miles per hour.
Dipper no longer breathed, and the lion no longer struggled to move. They just sat there, frozen down to their very atoms, staring at each other.
Time itself was effectively paused.
Sam stepped out from behind a tree, admiring the glowing machine in his hand. I’ll have to remember that button. He thought. Time travel isn’t so hard at all…
Careful not to leave footprints or otherwise disturb the scene, he came up behind the combatants. Once he got safely into the lion’s blind side, he extended one hand, and touched her on the shoulder. With his free hand, he pressed the button again.
The time machine hummed, and the robot returned to motion. Her oil dripped and splattered on the frozen water, the sparks from her neck arced slowly and sluggishly through the still air.
Sam took a step back.
The beast was a little too dumb, overwhelmed, and injured to understand that the rest of the world was frozen. All she saw was her last little enemy, standing there before her. She levered herself slowly upright, dragging her paralyzed hind legs behind. Her one remaining saw extended to deal one last spiteful attack.
The saw cut Dipper’s arm off.
Confused as to why that had been so easy, the creature swiped her claw at Dipper’s head. The impact left a crater in his frozen helmet, and a hole in his frozen head.
She swiped again, and tore open the boy’s torso.
She tried to swipe once more, but she was getting so very, very… Tired…
The light finally left her eye, the last of her power arced through the breach in her spine, her oil stopped flowing, and her gears went limp. Slowly, she collapsed in the water. And the dumb little life she’d lived became no more.
Sam looked upon the scene.
I left no trace. I left no clue. The boy died in his own fight, against his own enemy, and nobody will ever suspect different. Nobody will seek justice against me, because nobody will ever know.
You see, mother? I can kill. I can murder. And I can be clever about it. I AM capable of doing, learning, and becoming anything. I can make you proud yet, you wicked old crone…
He looked at the gash across Dipper’s chest. And he looked down at the faded scar in his own chest, and he smiled wryly.
Who am I kidding? This isn’t about mother. That one… That one was for me.
He returned the local timespace continuum to its base parameters, and stood watching just long enough to see Dipper’s arm fall off. To the boy, helpless and impotent during these events, the lion would have appeared to teleport toward him, inflicting all these injuries instantaneously. To him, such a twist must have seemed bitterly unfair. Almost like cheating.
Sam pulled the tape out to the 2-day increment, pushed the backwards button, and released.
Thank you, mother. He thought. For the gift.

Time:
2013 A.D., June 6th (6 days before the present; the day the robot first attacked. Chapter 7.)

Wendy, Dipper, Soos, and the Stans stood dumbstruck in the Mystery Shack parlor, as the saws of the robot lion tore through the wall toward them. Mabel stood in the midst of the group, holding in her hands the reason for their current danger: the lion’s lost child, ‘Juan’. She was trying to approach the enraged machine to give him back, but Stanley was holding her at a safe distance.
The wall was coming apart, rapidly. Soon it would be inside. Wendy realized they had no time left, so she snatched Ford’s magnet gun from him, pointed it at the robot, and fired. Mabel screamed and dived off to the side with Juan, to keep him away from the blast.
But the mother took the pulse square in the brain.
The sound of its saws, and the yelling of the humans inside, all stopped at the same time, leaving the entire house instantly silent. The mother’s remaining eye darkened, and its body twitched. Then it slouched over, half inside the doorway, half out, and stopped moving entirely. They all stood there staring for a minute or so.
The only movement was from Juan, as he crawled out of Mabel’s hands, ran across the room to the dead machine, and began to gently lick at her face with his saws.
“You killed her.” Mabel whispered.
Wendy lowered the weapon, and sighed.
“You killed her!” Mabel screamed. “Wendy, you murdered Juan’s mom!”
“Not murder!” Wendy snapped. “It’s just an animal! A metal animal at that, and it darn well had it coming!”
“She only wanted her son!”
“She was destroying the house!”
“She’s innocent!”
“She chased me to kill me, she ate our bikes, she fought my dad, SHE MAYBE KILLED MY DAD, and she was coming to kill us here! Mabel, this was the only way!”
As Ford took his magnet gun back, he mumbled something about both of them being right, and something else about endangered species.
Mabel was near to tears as she stepped over to where Juan was licking the bigger machine. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…” She whispered to him, and reached down to pick him up.
But then, he did something that nobody expected.
He sawed Mabel.
She yelped, drew her hand back, and then stood staring at the trickle of red coming out of her body. Then she burst into tears. “I’m sorry, Juan!” She wailed. “I’m so, so sorry!!”
Stan rushed forward and dealt Juan a savage kick, which sent him smashing into the wall. Dipper was right behind him, and he pulled Mabel back to safety. Stan went to find the first aid kit. “Shoot that little one, will you Ford?” He asked.
Ford pulled the magnet gun back out.
“I’M SORRY!” Mabel wailed again, and struggled against Dipper’s hold. “I didn’t mean any of this! I STILL LOVE YOU, JUAN!”
Ford leveled the gun. Nobody besides Mabel moved to intervene.
Before he could pull the trigger, time froze.
Sam stepped out from behind the larger robot, and inspected the scene. The way I figure it, that girl Mabel is the one who released me from my prison. She may not have meant to… But I can use the little robot as leverage to manipulate her. Trick her. Make perfectly certain that she WILL set out on her own secret little hairbrained quest. Make perfectly certain that she’ll let me loose.
After all, that’s the way it happened already, isn’t it?
He reached out one long arm, unfroze Juan, and picked him up. The little creature struggled in his hand, twisted his head around, and tried to cut his hand. Sam transformed in Mabel’s form, the shape he would most be used to. “Hey, calm down!” He told it, with a smile full of braces and a chipper young voice. “You’re with friends now, you little tool…”

Time:
2013 A.D. (Present day, give or take maybe an hour.)

Ford stood with shotgun ready, listening to the creaking movement in the Mystery Shack far above. It can’t be Stan; he’s away. It can’t be the kids; they’re here with me, as much as they can be. It can’t be FiddleFord or Wendy, they’re away too… Who or what was trespassing now, of all times?
He glanced back at his great Niece, now plugged into the brain-scanner machine. I should wake her. He thought. Just so we’re both alert and able to handle ourselves in case something worse happens.
“Remember ME?”
But it was too late, because something worse was already happening.
“I remember YOU.”
Ford managed to get a single shot off, but that only because it had appeared behind him, and startled him into pulling the trigger. He tried to spin around, clubbing out with the butt of the weapon as he did, but somehow this thing seemed to know his every action before he even did it.
“And I’m here to split you open… Just as I should have done the moment I first laid eyes on you.”
In a number of seconds (too rapidly to react, really), the gun was out of his hands, his feet were out from beneath him, and he was flying across the room toward opposite wall. Already his hand was reaching for his trench coat to retrieve another weapon, and his eyes were squinting shut in preparation for the impact with the wall.
“My name is Sam. And my enemies are gone.”
But then something happened that neither of them suspected:
In midair, Ford disappeared in a flash of blue light.
Sam blinked, as he stared at the place where the old man had vanished. To anticipate all his actions, I had to relive this fight 3 times. He thought. And he never disappeared before… Maybe… Hmm… Ah, perhaps I’ll come back to this fight a 4th time, but that time I’ll merely freeze time and steal him. Yes, that will be smart of me. I’ll take him somewhere quieter, and do as I will there… Perhaps this future-me thinks I shouldn’t kill him immediately, and extract all the useful scientific knowledge he possesses first… Savor it… I dare-say, perhaps future-me is right.
He turned to Mabel Pines.
Now. He thought. The girl responsible for freeing me. The girl I corrupted. The girl whose brother I murdered. The girl whose very life is now laid bare before my every whim…
Whatever am I to do with you?

Time:
2013 A.D., June 12th (Present.)

He can do anything! Wendy realized. He can enforce his own fate, he can change the fate of others. He can kill, he can save… He’ll do exactly as he pleases, for exactly as long as he pleases, and there’s nothing anybody can do to track him, follow him, foresee him, or stop him!
HE WAS THE ONE WHO KILLED MY BEST FRIEND! HE’S THE ONE WHO’S ABOUT TO KILL MABEL AND FORD! He’s the one who’s behind this entire awful mess! IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!
I’LL KILL HIM!!
Wendy strained once more against the webs in utter rage, as she racked her brain. I have to escape! I have to! But I can’t…! Somebody’s got to come for me! Well… Well how about Stan and McGucket?!? They’re working on the ship’s reactor right now, and they’ll realize I’m gone before too long, and…
Wendy saw the mother Shifter tap a few buttons on her computer console. The security drones in the room, no longer needed, hovered out the door to resume their normal operation.
Oh yeah. Wendy remembered. HER. She’s in control of the drones. She could have sent countless units to attack the old guys. They wouldn’t expect a full-scale attack like that, and would be annihilated… I have to warn them! Have to warn them… How do I do that?
After she’d been pondering that for a moment, she heard a noise begin. It was a massive noise, rumbling through the walls with a shudder and an enormous echo; like thunder, or the passing of a nearby train. Those must be the engines! Wendy thought. They got the reactor working, I guess…
Wait…
Is it too late for a warning? Wendy blinked. If she sent the drones right away, like an hour ago, then they could be dead already! She could ALREADY be in control of the ship! We were planning to use the ship’s engines like a tractor beam, to destroy the Forest of Daggers… With that kind of power at HER disposal, she could do the same, to anyone or anything!
As Wendy stared aghast at the shifter’s turned back, the rumbling of the engines took on a new horror. My… My dad and his crew are out there right now! Right near where it’s aimed… Is this the noise of them dying?!?
Has she been pulling strings too?!? Is that the only reason she’s in the 21st century at all?!? Because this is the time she knew we’d finally get the reactor running? Was she just biding her time while we prepared her the ultimate weapon?!? Are we all just pawns for the wrong side?!?
Has the wrong side already won?!?
The webs were cold and rough on Wendy’s sweaty skin. The engines turned back off, leaving the air silent and perfectly still. The monster herself turned off the console, leaving the room almost perfectly dark. As her eyes adjusted, Wendy saw the monster finally turn toward her.
She finished adding it all up.
Stanford is gone.
Stanley is gone.
McGucket is gone.
Dad is gone.
Mabel is gone.
Dipper is gone.
Every last one of the heroes in this town, every last one of the people who might know how to fix this or might stand a chance at doing anything at all…
Every single one of them is gone…
…

I’m the last one left.

Description

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Chapter 24: Dragon's Lair

Author’s Note: This was an interesting picture to draw. I knew I wanted to very clearly show the creepiness of the skeletons on the wall behind the characters, but I also wanted to clearly show the shifters' shadows, and have them look like actual, real shadows (clear, stark shadows are hard with pencil, doubly so when something else is happening behind them). So to accomplish the task well, I actually just drew the outlines of the shadows on the paper before I drew the background, and scanned that into the computer. Then I erased the shadows on the paper, drew the background, and scanned it again. That way, I could use gimp to shade in the shadows from the first scan, and layer them on top of the second scan. Now, ta-da! Realistic-looking shadows.

And one of the shadows is hideous and monstrous because symbolism.

Also, if you're wondering where I get names for my time-OCs, it's easy! All you have to do is take real names and add sci-fi suffixes to them, like 'oid' or 'icus' or 'ulor' or 'ite', resulting in things like Jamesulor and Bobite. See? Perfect future-y names. I used the names of my two Grandpas, John Reich and Craig Martinson... But you don't know what I'm talking about yet, so, uh... Read on, I guess.

Time:
3680 B.C., October 3rd (Long ago, 1 month after the crash of Colonial Vessel 46.18’\.)

Two solitary armored figures stood on the crest of the hill, looking out across the valley.
One of them was speaking into a headset. “This is Time-Lieutenant Craigoid and Time-Officer Johnicus reporting in. Come in, time-dispatch. Time-dispatch, do you read?”
The time-communicator warbled with static as it linked with the future. “This is Time-Dispatch, we read you loud and clear, Officer. What seems to be the time-issue? Over.”
Craigoid’s eyes swept the landscape. In his peripheral vision, his partner’s hand nervously twitched on the handle of his laser arm cannon; the boy had never been on a mission like this before, and wasn’t coping too well. “Well, dispatch…” Craigoid started. “Do you remember learning about that giant UFO that crashed in Southwest Canada?”
“Ahh… Yeah, didn’t they unearth that sometime in the 22nd century?”
“Yeah, that’s the one… Well… My partner and I just found ourselves at the landing site back in 3680 B.C., and it looks like the vehicle has just recently crashed. Fires are still burning, radiation off the charts… We’re thinking there might be survivors. Permission to enter the wreck and administer aid? Over.”
“Ah, that’s a negative, Lieutenant. 3680 B.C. is well outside our department’s jurisdiction. What are you even doing back then anyway? Over.”
“Got an anonymous tip about an accelerated improbability field. And I am getting some weird readings here; looks like some of the vehicle’s engines might still be active. Over.”
“Hmm… This could be sensitive then. Return back to present day immediately, and we’ll weigh options then. Over.”
Lieutenant Craigoid turned off his time-communicator with a dissatisfied grunt, and cast another look back at the crashed ship.
The enormous curved hull arched ominously above the two time-cops, shining in the early morning sun with the tarnished gleam of yielded titanium. Miles behind it, the force of the crash had carved a giant spacecraft-shaped chunk out of the cliffs. All around, massive rubble and chunks of earth and rock lay scattered, as if tossed by a shovel. The bare patches of blasted land had yet to sprout any sort of grass or vegetation, and the nearby river was still running brown with the great volumes of displaced soil. Part of the wreck appeared to be below this waterline, and thus would probably be flooded inside. The hull itself was pockmarked with holes and craters, with the occasional chunk of paneling missing entirely. Some gaps spewed smoke, which bore the strange smell of burning plastics.
Craigoid focused his cyborg eye to try and take a detailed scan of the wreck, but the hull was too thick; thermal and x-ray imaging came up negative. The only way to see inside would be to explore it in person…
He cast a glance back at his young partner. “I’m going in, Johnicus.” He told him.
“But sir, time-dispatch sa—!”
“Time-dispatch says a lot of things, kid. Think about it; what if we didn’t check it out? Everybody higher-up would be perfectly happy to just sweep it all under a rug, ‘cause of course the emperor doesn’t have the attention span to deal with it… If anything’s to be done, we’re the ones to do it… And besides, what they don’t know won’t time ‘em…” He turned off his time-locator. “I’m just going for a quick look. Just to see if there’s anyone… Or anything left alive. You be sure and call it in if anything goes timeways; You can tell ‘em it was my idea.”
“Well…! Well, it could be pretty time-dangerous, sir! Shouldn’t we be more careful sir?”
“Kid…” He gave his partner a stern look. “If we were that careful during… The War… Then your generation wouldn’t have been born. It’s a fact. I checked.”
“You’re always talking about ‘The War’.”
“You’re a good kid, kid…” He whipped out his laser cannon, and started for what looked like an entrance. “Stay here kid, I couldn’t stand if something happened to you. I’ll be out in a time-minute.”
“But sir—”
“Oh, calm down, kid. I’ve handled far worse back in… The War.”
“You…! Never mind. Nothing.”
The Time-Lieutenant disappeared into the wreck. Time-Officer Johnicus stared after him for a few minutes, then sighed and sat down on a nearby rock. After nervously studying his boots for a few minutes, he stood back up with a determined frown. That’s it. He thought. The Time-Lieutenant can’t just keep doing crazy things like this. And if I can’t stop him, then at least I’ll stop him from doing it alone. I’m going in after him. He pulled out his arm cannon, charged its capacitors, and followed Craigoid down into the depths.
It quickly became too dark to see, so he switched on the cyborg implants in his right eye to get a thermal view. It definitely helped, even if it didn’t give very good depth perception.
After a minute or so of walking, the featureless metal hallway split off into a great number of passages and rooms. Which way did he go? It’s like a maze…
Well, he couldn’t just ask. The Time-Lieutenant was always on him about useless radio chatter (After all, they never chatted during The War.) So Johnicus took an educated guess at where he would have gone, and started down the middle path, directly for the center of the wreck.
The last outside light faded behind him, and the radiation and heat were getting steadily worse. Soon he was beginning to worry that his combat armor might not be enough to keep him safe. It was timetanium mesh weave, but enough radiation can get through anything, and besides, the suit still left his face uncomfortably exposed. This rig was for riot control, not environmental shielding…
He was about to turn back when his time-communicator beeped with the voice of the Time-Lieutenant himself. He couldn’t make out any words, but the voice sounded frantic. The transmission cut off after a few seconds, and somewhere far up ahead, Johnicus heard the sound of a laser cannon discharge. The color drained from his face. “Uh…!” He stuttered. “Uh! Uh, HANG ON TIME-LIEUTENANT! I’M COMING!” He began to sprint forward, his heart racing. What if something was really wrong? What if he’s actually in trouble? What do I do? How do I help? And what should I tell time-dispatch…?
Oh yeah, time-dispatch! I should really just call this in now…
But before he could stop to phone it in, he saw the Time-Lieutenant’s body lying in the hall ahead of him. Forgetting all else, he rushed up and bent over him. “SIR!” He yelped. “Sir, are you okay?”
“Eh…? Kid…? Oh… Thank Time you’re alright, kid. I put up a stiff fight, but that time time-timed mother-timing timehole got away, and I think my time-leg’s busted… You’re gonna have to go on without me, kid. Tell the Time-Major it was an honor serving with him… Tell Time-Officer Lolph he still owes me synevety credits… And my wife… Tell her she was always a crooked old hag, and I’m glad to be rid of her… No, don’t tell her that, it’ll break her heart… No, do tell her that. With any luck, it’ll break her heart…”
“No, I’m gonna get you out of here sir! Come on, put your time-arm around me, and we can—”
Then a lot of things seemed to happen all at once. Before he knew it, Johnicus was lying on the floor too. His time-communicator was shattered, his laser gun was missing, his cyborg eye had a hole in it, he was pretty sure his right arm was broken, and the Lieutenant was strangely still and silent. Oh time-dang it…! What happened? What… No… I need… I need to get us out of here. I need to time-travel… Got to reach… His shaking hand fumbled toward his belt, and landed on his time machine. I just have to pull the control tape. Get us back to civilized times, and somebody will find us. Just need-
A claw reached out of the perfect darkness, and grabbed his wrist. The grip was astoundingly strong, and its skin felt moist. Then another claw reached into his captured fist, and plucked the time machine away from him.
“H-hey! Give that back--!” He stuttered helplessly into the darkness. “Uh! I mean…! You’re under time-arrest in the name of the Time Paradox Avoidance Enforcement Squadron! Stand down and nobody gets…! Gets…!”
Something hit him hard on the head, and he knew no more.

Time:
2013 A.D., June 12th (Present day.)

Somehow, the Shapeshifter had gotten free of Ford’s bunker. Somehow, he’d been impersonating Robbie all week and nobody had noticed. For some reason, he’d named himself ‘Sam’. And somehow, he’d found his way down into the alien ship, and to the exact place where his mother had once prowled. Somehow, ‘Sam’ had found his way back home.
And somehow, thousands of years after his mother must have been dead… She was alive.
Yeah, there’s a lot of mysteries left. But none of them really matter all that much. Wendy thought. All that matters is that this dear family has finally been reunited, after all these long, hard years apart. Aww! That’s so sweet!
Actually, that’s not what she was thinking.
She was really thinking: NOPE.
Nope. While the two monsters had their attention on each other, she began to discretely back away. Nope. Her eyes drifted across the security drones floating around the room. They all seemed to be focusing on her… Not attacking, but it was probably only a matter of time. Nope. She looked around the room itself. The walls were covered in grotesque skeletons from all manner of species, stretched out by their arms, plastered in place by spider-like webs. These are everyone who’s ever crossed her… Hate to say it, but some of ‘em look just a tad tougher than me. Wendy’s hand touched the wall behind her, and she felt her way back to the passage where she’d come from, never taking her eyes of the shifters. Nope. Her eyes lingered on the small, fist-sized yellow machine Momma Shifter clutched in her right hand. If that is what I think it is… She finally found the opening in the wall, turned toward it, and began to sprint into the darkness. One hand fumbled out her flashlight, and the other pulled a second ray gun out of her belt. NopenopenopenopenopeNOPE.
Just before she passed out of sight, she stopped, and pointed the weapon back at them. The beam isn’t all that powerful, so I gotta shoot ‘em in the head this time. But which one to shoot first? She took aim. Momma Shifter knows this ship better than ‘Sam’, so she’d be harder to escape from. Plus, she apparently has control of the security system. I shoot her, then I shoot him as fast as I can. But whatever I do, it needs to happen quickly, before something worse happens.
She pulled the trigger. Two green beams spat from the weapon’s tip.
But it was too late, because something worse was already happening.

Time:
2013 A.D., June 12th (Present day, a couple seconds before the last paragraph.)

So.
His mother was a thin little woman, as far as the definition could stretch. Shorter than himself, and narrower across the shoulders. Her 4 legs were longer, and their 6 tips seemed sharper. Her arms were more symmetrical, and their fingers looked stronger. The pale mucus layer across her body wasn’t transparent, as his was. It seemed cloudy, and swirling, and active. As if even though she’d reverted to her true form, she’d never really relaxed. Never let her muscle cells go limp. Always optimizing her body. Always focusing, always preparing, brewing and stewing, hiding something inside.
And as for her face…
He’d never had any experience interpreting the expressions and body language of his own people. But to him, her face seemed hard… Not loving like he’d hoped, not relieved at seeing her son, not happy or warm like a mother should be… But not hateful, or cold, or distant, or cruel either… Just hard. As if she were already insane, but could not be driven insane. As if already dead, but could not be killed. As if already unspeakably evil, but could not be corrupted. As if nothing he would ever do could ever even make her blink. He got a feeling that if he ever laid a hand on her, ever crossed her, ever even looked at her wrongly, he would instantly just fall down dead… Without cause, without reason, just dead…
The bodies on the wall seemed like they were looking at him. Warning him with their silent, toothy smiles and their hollow, empty stares to flee from this place and never return. He tried not to look at them.
His mother’s narrow red eyes rotated slowly in their sockets, as they looked him slowly up and down. He blinked, and wondered if he should have. His claw fidgeted at its side, and he told it to hold still. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, because he dared not speak.
These aren’t ordinary feelings to have towards mothers…
After a quiet and bone-chilling moment of inspection, her body began to shift. She transformed into something that looked like a human with a fish tail, and made a strange series of chirping, whistling noises, like a porpoise. Then fell silent, waiting for him to respond.
He frowned, not sure what that meant or what he should say back.
She transformed into something large and hairy, (called a ‘Gremloblin’, if he remembered correctly), and made a growling, roaring noise.
He didn’t know what that meant either.
She took the form of a human woman, with a pronounced jaw, a heavy forehead, and clothing crudely made of animal fur. This new form made a noise like grunting and hooting.
Was that some kind of language? He didn’t recognize a single word.
The next form was a human woman too, and the noise definitely words. Not English words, but it was certainly supposed to mean something. He just didn’t know what. The human looked Native-American.
The next human looked very Asian, and he didn’t know that language either.
This process repeated a few times. A few different humans, a few different ethnicities. African. European. Middle-eastern. A few others he couldn’t place. Always they spoke some language he’d never heard.
Finally there was a lengthy pause, and she returned to her true form. “No?” She asked, her actual voice level, quiet, and not quite casual. “Nothing? Just English?”
Oh. He realized. It was a test. A test I must have failed… “No.” He frowned. “Just… English.”
“Hmm.” She considered him for a moment longer. Then she took a step toward him.
He almost felt intimidated enough to take a step back.
She came right up, and walked in a slow circle around him, her eyes drinking in every detail. She looked into his eyes, inspected his teeth, curiously regarded his misshapen right arm. Then she raised one of her hands. The claw on the end shifted into what looked like a tiny knife.
The blade darted forward and left a tiny cut in the shoulder. He jumped not quickly enough, and bit his tongue to keep from crying out. A tiny dribble of green blood ran down his arm, while the wound itself closed up and healed over quickly.
His mother’s knife shifted back into a finger, and there was a drop of his own blood on the end. She licked it off, and was silent for a minute as she rolled it around on her tongue, tasting every chemical, every hormone, every strand of DNA.
Finally she spoke again.
“Disappointing.”
The work hung in the air for a minute.
“What do you mean…?”
“Your taste.” She pointed to her mouth with a little grimace. “Your flesh has fallen into familiar patterns, lost its potential, and its versatility. And your mind…” She pointed toward his head. “You are not nearly paranoid enough, not nearly observant, deceptive, or clever enough…”
“I…? What…?”
She pointed to a faint mark on his chest. “How about this? What caused this?”
He looked down. He thought the scar would have disappeared by now, but apparently nothing had escaped her scrutiny… “That’s—” He began.
“Knife, sword, spear?” She interrupted. “No… Axe. A human weapon. And it isn’t very deep, so a weak human at that. Something small and pathetic, something overeager and overconfident, something you should have been able to kill in an instant. And it wasn’t in your back either, so that means you were facing this enemy. At close range. You. Lost. A fight. Like that.”
“Well—”
“Am I wrong?”
He could feel himself growing angry. “…You’re… Right…” He managed to growl.
“And I couldn’t help but notice…” She gestured back toward her ghastly wallpaper. “You’ve been glancing at my little collection rather frequently… As if they horrify you… So that tells me you’ve never even killed anyone before… Have you.”
He licked his teeth slowly. “…No…”
“And you don’t have any money. And you don’t have any tools. You don’t have friends in high places, or plans, or expertise or special skills, or anything at all that could be of use… Do you.”
He frowned silently.
“Sam.” A quiet sound, somewhere between a growl and a sigh, rumbled up from her throat. “…Why did you waste your life?”
He stared at his mother, aghast.
All this time. All this expectation, all this yearning for his people, for his family, for somebody to share his burden, for a friend to be there for him… All his life of pain, and this was his reward? To be told that everything he’d ever done was grossly insufficient…?
A single thought rose up in his mind, and overpowered his fear: How dare she?
“…Is that how it is?” He growled. “I… I can be anyone. I can do anything, learn anything, mimic anyone… That’s how I got here… I got here… I found you. I fought tooth and nail my entire childhood to get free of my prison, I’ve learned music and science and deception in the week I’ve been free, and now you’re telling me I should have learned languages by now? Telling me that my shapeshifting skills, which have always been sufficient as far as they depend on me, aren’t good enough?”
She didn’t visibly react, although her eyes may have narrowed just a touch.
“…Stanford Pines, the man who found me, he never stopped poking and prodding. Never stopped feeding me beans, never let me learn, never let me know who I was… And I never saw the sun. Or the surface, or this ship, or any of my own people, or anything at all beyond my CAGE…
“He found my egg in 1979. That’s thirty-four years ago. Thirty-four years where I knew you were dead because you never came for me; never rescued me. But now that you’re alive, it just invites questions: where were you? WHY was I ALONE? Why did you let me SUFFER?!? WHAT…” He took a step toward her, raised his hand to strike her in the face. “WHAT KIND OF MOTHER ARE YOU?!?”
Less than halfway through his swing, she transformed her fist into a club made of 2-inch-long-throns, which she used to jab him in the stomach hard enough to pierce his organs. His own blow never connected, as he doubled over in pain, leaving his head exposed. She turned her other fist into solid bone, enlarged the muscles on that arm, and swung it at his head.
His scull cracked nearly in two. He quickly liquefied it, shifted it back into place, and re-hardened it again. (Which removed the injury, but did nothing for the raging headache.) Blood continued to pour internally and externally from the dozen gouges in his stomach, though they were healing quickly.
Before he’d even gotten his wits about him, he felt enormous clawed hands grasp his shoulders, and lift him off the ground. He opened his eyes to behold an honest-to-goodness dragon, like something out of a fairy tale, or a nightmare. Its monstrous leathery, clawed wings, almost too large for the confines of the room, spread over the scene, while its warm breath and coal-orange eyes bore down at him from amid the jagged purple scales. Its spear-like tail curled threateningly, much too close to his back.
“Hmm.” His mother’s voice chuckled from between the jagged teeth. “The humans have gotten to you.” She told him. Her voice was cold now. Very, very cold. “To the humans.” She continued. “A ‘mother’ is a mentor, a teacher, a helper. This is because they are WEAK… They cannot learn on their own. They cannot mature or grow or conquer on their own. But WE, my son… WE are STRONG. You are right; we can learn anything. We can become anything. We can become great; it is in our nature to make of ourselves what we will… That is why I never named you, Sam. Because you don’t need me holding your hand. When you were ready, you would name yourself. You would become yourself! …I trusted you to become yourself!”
The dragon dropped him on the floor. Its scales blurred and paled, its limbs shrunk and thinned, and the entire massive beast collapsed back into the shape of his mother, standing in the exact same position that she had been before he struck at her.
He struggled slowly to his feet, with no more words to say.
“I don’t need to explain myself to you.” She told him. “…But since you asked: I left you for Dr. Pines on purpose. So that you could kill him.”
“I…” Sam grunted shallowly. The pain in his stomach was still incredible, assisted healing or no. It would definitely leave quite a scar. “I… I was SMALL…!” He managed to gasp in protest.
“You were WEAK!” She corrected him, and almost spat out the last word. “If you were truly STRONG, you could have taken the form of a fast and slippery worm, climbed your way down his throat, and split him open from the inside. Or waited until his back was turned, and wrapped yourself around his neck? Bite him with venom? Gouge out his eyes? There are innumerable methods to get the best of a larger creature.
“Why didn’t you kill him for his scientific knowledge, kill his partner for his mechanical knowledge, take the place of his brother the globe-trotting vagabond for his worldly knowledge, ally yourself with the demon himself, and earn yourself a spot as a ruler of the universe? Grow prestigious among all manner of beings, amassing power and wealth and glory to rival all lesser life…! But instead you squander the fertile ground that I gave you… And then have the audacity to tell me I did nothing…”
He stared at her for a good long while, in silent, dumbstruck horror.
They thought I was twisted. He thought, as he took a step back. They thought I was evil. They thought I was a monster… Heck, I even thought so myself… But now I meet her… I guess everything’s relative…
No…
No, she’s right.
Nothing’s relative at all.
There is no good. There is no evil.
There is only strength and weakness… It’s like I’ve always known deep down: love, care, friendship, peace, and all the things I’ve longed for… They don’t matter. They don’t buy anything, they don’t do any good…
She’s right. I did adopt the human’s beliefs. I sought after feeling and happiness, whilst caring nothing for the singular virtue of power. And because I was not monstrous enough, because I was not evil or twisted enough, because I was too jaded, too hesitant, too cowardly… I gave up my strength.
I sacrificed everything that could I have made me great. I lost…
He clenched his fists, and hung his head like a rebuked dog.
I understand now… I understand…
His mother suddenly changed the subject, and pointed behind him. “Who’s your little friend?”
He sighed silently, and glanced over his shoulder at the place where Wendy Corduroy had been standing moments ago. “Oh… That’s… Hmm… Where’d she go? The dragon must have scared her off…”
“Her? I don’t think so…” His mother retorted. “Better question: why didn’t you disarm her?”
“I uh… I did… I destroyed that ray gun of hers…”
“Congratulations on that.” His mother hissed sarcastically. “But did you know she also had a second one hidden on her person somewhere? Along with two axes, 4 knives, a flare gun, a lighter, a can of pepper spray, and whatever this is?” Her hand opened to reveal the small pile of items she’d just described.
“No…?”
“5 minutes ago, she shot us both in the head.” His mother dropped Wendy’s gear on the floor, and once again twirled the little yellow machine she’d been holding this entire time. “And you died. All because of your negligence; forgetful enough to take eyes off your enemy for even a moment… You should have at least moved your brain out of your head, instead of leaving it in the one place where anybody would be sure to aim…”
“I… Huh?” He glanced confusedly about the room, looking for his misplaced enemy. And what was this about dying? She made it sound like it had already happened…
He finally located Wendy; she was webbed to the wall with all the other bodies. Arms and legs stretched out, mouth covered up tight, perfectly helpless… How the heck did she get there?
“Do you know what this is?” He turned back to his mother in confusion, and saw her holding up the little machine for him to inspect.
“No…” He frowned.
“I wanted you to come back worthy.” She lowered her voice. “Perhaps that’s one way you’re right about mothers… We all want to see our children grow up to be something, we all want the best for them, and are disappointed when they fail… I don’t want to let my only son go to waste. I do want you to be great, Sam… And if you’re too weak to ever be of use to me, perhaps the only way is to offer you a fresh start… Here.”
She tossed him the machine.
He looked down at it. It was a fist-sized yellow and black box, with a few buttons on the top, a belt clip on the back, and a symbol like an hourglass on the front. There was also a little tab sticking off the bottom, and he pulled it. The tab extended off, trailing a numbered ribbon behind it… Was this a tape measure…? Wait… It didn’t have inches or centimeters on it… It had times. Minutes. Hours. Days. Years… Centuries… Millenia… As he pulled the tape out further, the machine itself began to emit a quiet whine, like the starting of a tiny engine. The symbol began to glow a bright blue.
Then he remembered a story he’d overheard from Wendy this morning, and it fell into place.
“It’s a time machine…” He realized.
“The only gift you’ll ever get from mommy.” She said. “Take it away, use it well… And don’t show your face here again, not until you’re STRONG. Come back...” She casually gestured toward a small pile of gold sitting in one corner of her cave. “When you’re rich,” She indicated the security drones hovering about the room, waiting on her command to strike. “When you’re powerful,” She morphed her face rapidly through an innumerable number of faces, forms, and appearances, as if shuffling cards. “When you know every language, have read every book, taken every class, when you’re smart enough to match me and man enough to no longer need me,” She pointed to the wreckage of the ship around them. “When you know how to help me fix this heap of scrap, and are ready to meet your people…” She pointed to the bodies. “And when every single one of your enemies is GONE… Only then do you have my permission to return.”
He looked at the machine. Then at Wendy. Then at his mother.
He locked eyes with her, and held her gaze in silence for a moment. And he realized that he hated her just a bit. Maybe more than a bit. He hated her enough that he wanted to make her proud. Hated her enough to force her to eat her words, make her recant the belittling things she’d said, make her grovel before him, prove that he was equal to her, and better than equal. We will meet back here when I am through. He silently promised her. When I am your superior in the world of monsters. When the virtues of my strength exceed yours. When all my enemies are gone.
So he pulled out the time machine’s control tape, pressed the ‘backward’ button, and released.
With a blinding flash of blue light, he disappeared.

This is probably how bugs feel. Wendy thought. After they’ve gotten themselves all tangled in a spider’s web, and sit waiting for the beast itself to take notice of them, and come to eat.
Well, no… Bugs probably don’t feel exactly like this. Bugs have pretty thick exoskeletons, so the hard little fibers of the web probably aren’t as uncomfortable. And bugs don’t have very good eyesight, so they probably wouldn’t have to suffer the suspense of seeing the spider sitting there, biding her time. And spiders don’t gag their prey, so bugs wouldn’t be quite so preoccupied with chewing and spitting all the sticky gunk out of their mouths.
And, of course, bugs are much too dumb to actually understand what was happening to them. They don’t sit and stare at the spider and quietly rage, think and plot their methods of escape, and ponder the consequences of the situation.
Wendy was no bug.
As she silently hung there, she thought.
So time travel is a thing. A very real, very effective thing, and now Sam can go anywhere or anytime he wants. Where would he go first? What’ll he do?
…Well…
If he can go to the past, and if his mom already had it for a long time in the past, the REAL question is what has ALREADY been done…?

Time:
2013 A.D., June 8th (4 days before the present, the day of the death of Dipper Pines. Chapter 18.)

As he stepped forward, he knew he wasn’t ready.
He didn’t really know how to find a robot’s weak points. Didn’t really know how to stay in her blind spots. Wasn’t really sure how to dodge her saws. Didn’t know how fast she could move, injured as she was. He didn’t really know how fast he could move himself, weighed down as he was with armor. Wasn’t positive whether he could keep Wendy safe, unconscious as she was.
Heck, he didn’t even know how to use this axe.
He wasn’t ready.
Then again, he never was.
Never stopped me before.
And thus did the duel begin.
It lasted mere minutes. Wretched, racing, wordless, wild minutes, whose seconds seemed to stretch on for an eternity of surging desperation. He distracted the beast enough to lead it away from Wendy, and kept out of its reach for the most part. He’d even used the chainsaw chaps to gum up all but one of her saws, so that her means of attack was limited to her remaining saw and the claws on her forelegs. She seemed to be getting tired after so long dragging her own weight around, and was slowing down…
And as for Dipper himself… Nothing but flesh wounds. Some worse than others, some bleeding pretty bad, but nothing deeper than skin, no broken bones. He could still walk, still move all his appendages. And his thundering heart and adrenaline-filled mind kept him upright and focused, forgetting their own troubles until some less-desperate moment. As human bodies tend to do in such situations.
Then it happened; he scored his first step towards real victory. He’d jumped onto the creature’s back, and when she found that she couldn’t reach her forelegs up far enough to grab him off, she’d rolled over to crush him. At the last second, he’d shoved the axe into a chink in her armor, and jumped clear. Her own weight drove the axe in deep, and 2 things snapped. One of them was the axe’s handle, the other was something crucial inside her.
And now the two combatants lay not 6 feet from each other, ankle deep in the cool water of the creek. Him gasping for breath, and her with completely paralyzed hind legs.
Yes… YES!
That would buy him enough time to run back and get his magnet gun, and stun her harmless… Then… Well… They weren’t too far from the Mystery Shack, so Ford or somebody would probably get here before long and finish her off for good…
Actually, no… No, there was no need to finish her off. He could see it now: she was already dying. Some surge in her neck was sparking and hissing with electricity, frying her nerves a dozen at a time, and wasting whatever energy she had left… And volumes of black, living oil oozed and trickled from her every injury, pooling on the surface of the water, being carried away… Her power and her blood, both draining.
Her one red eye was flickering ever darker, losing its glow, losing its life…
Dipper staggered to his feet and looked down at her.
I… He barely dared to think it. I won… I beat you… I saved Wendy… I WON!
The thought threatened to break his focus, but he knew he had to press his advantage now; had to go get the magnet gun. Had to get Wendy to safety. Had to get his injuries looked at. No time to celebrate, not while there still remained some faint chance of something worse happening.
But it was too late, because something worse was already happening.

The world slowed to a stop. The birds stopped singing. The bees stopped flying. The trees stopped swaying. The water stopped rippling. The wind stopped blowing. Even the very soundwaves in the air halted in their travels, and the lightspeed constant dropped to about 80 miles per hour.
Dipper no longer breathed, and the lion no longer struggled to move. They just sat there, frozen down to their very atoms, staring at each other.
Time itself was effectively paused.
Sam stepped out from behind a tree, admiring the glowing machine in his hand. I’ll have to remember that button. He thought. Time travel isn’t so hard at all…
Careful not to leave footprints or otherwise disturb the scene, he came up behind the combatants. Once he got safely into the lion’s blind side, he extended one hand, and touched her on the shoulder. With his free hand, he pressed the button again.
The time machine hummed, and the robot returned to motion. Her oil dripped and splattered on the frozen water, the sparks from her neck arced slowly and sluggishly through the still air.
Sam took a step back.
The beast was a little too dumb, overwhelmed, and injured to understand that the rest of the world was frozen. All she saw was her last little enemy, standing there before her. She levered herself slowly upright, dragging her paralyzed hind legs behind. Her one remaining saw extended to deal one last spiteful attack.
The saw cut Dipper’s arm off.
Confused as to why that had been so easy, the creature swiped her claw at Dipper’s head. The impact left a crater in his frozen helmet, and a hole in his frozen head.
She swiped again, and tore open the boy’s torso.
She tried to swipe once more, but she was getting so very, very… Tired…
The light finally left her eye, the last of her power arced through the breach in her spine, her oil stopped flowing, and her gears went limp. Slowly, she collapsed in the water. And the dumb little life she’d lived became no more.
Sam looked upon the scene.
I left no trace. I left no clue. The boy died in his own fight, against his own enemy, and nobody will ever suspect different. Nobody will seek justice against me, because nobody will ever know.
You see, mother? I can kill. I can murder. And I can be clever about it. I AM capable of doing, learning, and becoming anything. I can make you proud yet, you wicked old crone…
He looked at the gash across Dipper’s chest. And he looked down at the faded scar in his own chest, and he smiled wryly.
Who am I kidding? This isn’t about mother. That one… That one was for me.
He returned the local timespace continuum to its base parameters, and stood watching just long enough to see Dipper’s arm fall off. To the boy, helpless and impotent during these events, the lion would have appeared to teleport toward him, inflicting all these injuries instantaneously. To him, such a twist must have seemed bitterly unfair. Almost like cheating.
Sam pulled the tape out to the 2-day increment, pushed the backwards button, and released.
Thank you, mother. He thought. For the gift.

Time:
2013 A.D., June 6th (6 days before the present; the day the robot first attacked. Chapter 7.)

Wendy, Dipper, Soos, and the Stans stood dumbstruck in the Mystery Shack parlor, as the saws of the robot lion tore through the wall toward them. Mabel stood in the midst of the group, holding in her hands the reason for their current danger: the lion’s lost child, ‘Juan’. She was trying to approach the enraged machine to give him back, but Stanley was holding her at a safe distance.
The wall was coming apart, rapidly. Soon it would be inside. Wendy realized they had no time left, so she snatched Ford’s magnet gun from him, pointed it at the robot, and fired. Mabel screamed and dived off to the side with Juan, to keep him away from the blast.
But the mother took the pulse square in the brain.
The sound of its saws, and the yelling of the humans inside, all stopped at the same time, leaving the entire house instantly silent. The mother’s remaining eye darkened, and its body twitched. Then it slouched over, half inside the doorway, half out, and stopped moving entirely. They all stood there staring for a minute or so.
The only movement was from Juan, as he crawled out of Mabel’s hands, ran across the room to the dead machine, and began to gently lick at her face with his saws.
“You killed her.” Mabel whispered.
Wendy lowered the weapon, and sighed.
“You killed her!” Mabel screamed. “Wendy, you murdered Juan’s mom!”
“Not murder!” Wendy snapped. “It’s just an animal! A metal animal at that, and it darn well had it coming!”
“She only wanted her son!”
“She was destroying the house!”
“She’s innocent!”
“She chased me to kill me, she ate our bikes, she fought my dad, SHE MAYBE KILLED MY DAD, and she was coming to kill us here! Mabel, this was the only way!”
As Ford took his magnet gun back, he mumbled something about both of them being right, and something else about endangered species.
Mabel was near to tears as she stepped over to where Juan was licking the bigger machine. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…” She whispered to him, and reached down to pick him up.
But then, he did something that nobody expected.
He sawed Mabel.
She yelped, drew her hand back, and then stood staring at the trickle of red coming out of her body. Then she burst into tears. “I’m sorry, Juan!” She wailed. “I’m so, so sorry!!”
Stan rushed forward and dealt Juan a savage kick, which sent him smashing into the wall. Dipper was right behind him, and he pulled Mabel back to safety. Stan went to find the first aid kit. “Shoot that little one, will you Ford?” He asked.
Ford pulled the magnet gun back out.
“I’M SORRY!” Mabel wailed again, and struggled against Dipper’s hold. “I didn’t mean any of this! I STILL LOVE YOU, JUAN!”
Ford leveled the gun. Nobody besides Mabel moved to intervene.
Before he could pull the trigger, time froze.
Sam stepped out from behind the larger robot, and inspected the scene. The way I figure it, that girl Mabel is the one who released me from my prison. She may not have meant to… But I can use the little robot as leverage to manipulate her. Trick her. Make perfectly certain that she WILL set out on her own secret little hairbrained quest. Make perfectly certain that she’ll let me loose.
After all, that’s the way it happened already, isn’t it?
He reached out one long arm, unfroze Juan, and picked him up. The little creature struggled in his hand, twisted his head around, and tried to cut his hand. Sam transformed in Mabel’s form, the shape he would most be used to. “Hey, calm down!” He told it, with a smile full of braces and a chipper young voice. “You’re with friends now, you little tool…”

Time:
2013 A.D. (Present day, give or take maybe an hour.)

Ford stood with shotgun ready, listening to the creaking movement in the Mystery Shack far above. It can’t be Stan; he’s away. It can’t be the kids; they’re here with me, as much as they can be. It can’t be FiddleFord or Wendy, they’re away too… Who or what was trespassing now, of all times?
He glanced back at his great Niece, now plugged into the brain-scanner machine. I should wake her. He thought. Just so we’re both alert and able to handle ourselves in case something worse happens.
“Remember ME?”
But it was too late, because something worse was already happening.
“I remember YOU.”
Ford managed to get a single shot off, but that only because it had appeared behind him, and startled him into pulling the trigger. He tried to spin around, clubbing out with the butt of the weapon as he did, but somehow this thing seemed to know his every action before he even did it.
“And I’m here to split you open… Just as I should have done the moment I first laid eyes on you.”
In a number of seconds (too rapidly to react, really), the gun was out of his hands, his feet were out from beneath him, and he was flying across the room toward opposite wall. Already his hand was reaching for his trench coat to retrieve another weapon, and his eyes were squinting shut in preparation for the impact with the wall.
“My name is Sam. And my enemies are gone.”
But then something happened that neither of them suspected:
In midair, Ford disappeared in a flash of blue light.
Sam blinked, as he stared at the place where the old man had vanished. To anticipate all his actions, I had to relive this fight 3 times. He thought. And he never disappeared before… Maybe… Hmm… Ah, perhaps I’ll come back to this fight a 4th time, but that time I’ll merely freeze time and steal him. Yes, that will be smart of me. I’ll take him somewhere quieter, and do as I will there… Perhaps this future-me thinks I shouldn’t kill him immediately, and extract all the useful scientific knowledge he possesses first… Savor it… I dare-say, perhaps future-me is right.
He turned to Mabel Pines.
Now. He thought. The girl responsible for freeing me. The girl I corrupted. The girl whose brother I murdered. The girl whose very life is now laid bare before my every whim…
Whatever am I to do with you?

Time:
2013 A.D., June 12th (Present.)

He can do anything! Wendy realized. He can enforce his own fate, he can change the fate of others. He can kill, he can save… He’ll do exactly as he pleases, for exactly as long as he pleases, and there’s nothing anybody can do to track him, follow him, foresee him, or stop him!
HE WAS THE ONE WHO KILLED MY BEST FRIEND! HE’S THE ONE WHO’S ABOUT TO KILL MABEL AND FORD! He’s the one who’s behind this entire awful mess! IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!
I’LL KILL HIM!!
Wendy strained once more against the webs in utter rage, as she racked her brain. I have to escape! I have to! But I can’t…! Somebody’s got to come for me! Well… Well how about Stan and McGucket?!? They’re working on the ship’s reactor right now, and they’ll realize I’m gone before too long, and…
Wendy saw the mother Shifter tap a few buttons on her computer console. The security drones in the room, no longer needed, hovered out the door to resume their normal operation.
Oh yeah. Wendy remembered. HER. She’s in control of the drones. She could have sent countless units to attack the old guys. They wouldn’t expect a full-scale attack like that, and would be annihilated… I have to warn them! Have to warn them… How do I do that?
After she’d been pondering that for a moment, she heard a noise begin. It was a massive noise, rumbling through the walls with a shudder and an enormous echo; like thunder, or the passing of a nearby train. Those must be the engines! Wendy thought. They got the reactor working, I guess…
Wait…
Is it too late for a warning? Wendy blinked. If she sent the drones right away, like an hour ago, then they could be dead already! She could ALREADY be in control of the ship! We were planning to use the ship’s engines like a tractor beam, to destroy the Forest of Daggers… With that kind of power at HER disposal, she could do the same, to anyone or anything!
As Wendy stared aghast at the shifter’s turned back, the rumbling of the engines took on a new horror. My… My dad and his crew are out there right now! Right near where it’s aimed… Is this the noise of them dying?!?
Has she been pulling strings too?!? Is that the only reason she’s in the 21st century at all?!? Because this is the time she knew we’d finally get the reactor running? Was she just biding her time while we prepared her the ultimate weapon?!? Are we all just pawns for the wrong side?!?
Has the wrong side already won?!?
The webs were cold and rough on Wendy’s sweaty skin. The engines turned back off, leaving the air silent and perfectly still. The monster herself turned off the console, leaving the room almost perfectly dark. As her eyes adjusted, Wendy saw the monster finally turn toward her.
She finished adding it all up.
Stanford is gone.
Stanley is gone.
McGucket is gone.
Dad is gone.
Mabel is gone.
Dipper is gone.
Every last one of the heroes in this town, every last one of the people who might know how to fix this or might stand a chance at doing anything at all…
Every single one of them is gone…
…

I’m the last one left.