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Chapter 28: It Is Undone

Author’s Note: Although this may seem like a last-chapter sort of chapter, it isn't. It's the first of the last chapters, more like.

The escape.
The flight.
The ship.
Moments before the crash.
Dipper gripped his fingers as tight as he could into the armrests, as he fought to hold his position against the chaotic surging of the saucer’s gravity drive fields. In the seat beside him, Wendy struggled with the controls, trying to keep the vehicle a good distance from the ground, whilst going in a generally forwardly direction. Judging by the furrows in her brow and the sweat on her knuckles, it must be almost as hard as it looked.
Through it all, he tried to get his bearings. They needed to land safely, and as quickly as possible, because there wasn’t any telling how long this ship would hold together. Through the ship’s glass dome, off in the far distance, he spied the peak of the Multi-bear’s lair. Which means the town must be somewhere West of here… Which way was West? Wendy slipped up for a moment and the ship tipped up on its side, which coincidentally let Dipper find the sun as a reference. It was mid-afternoon in Summer, so West should be… That way! “Uh… Go tha… Turn Starboard! T-t-two-o’-clock!” He squealed, and raised a hand to point.
“Yeah, yeah, I got you, fam!” Wendy spun the ship.
“No no! Too far!”
“It’s touchy, it’s touchy… Oooookay! Yeah, here we go. There!”
“Waitwaitwait now pull up! PULL UP!”
They missed a ridge by a narrow margin, weaved between another two hills, and then Wendy finally got it high enough that they were high enough to see across the valley.
There were the hanging cliffs! The town should be a mile or so in front of them.
With their destination in sight, Dipper was starting to really get a feeling they were going to make it. Sure, they’d had a long day, what with the spiders trying to eat them and the lions trying to rip them in half, and the alien robot ghosts and the new mission to destroy the forest and all that biz, but now, they were actually home free.
Dipper was wrong, of course.
He couldn’t have known about the one robot lion that had stayed attached to the ship, just outside their view from the dome. He couldn’t have known that its saws were less than a minute from puncturing the nuclear reactor’s pressure chamber. He didn’t know that the resulting crash would send the ship to oblivion, and that he and the lion would follow it soon after.
He didn’t know any of that.
But he did notice when something strange happened.
A small blast, and a sound like rushing air, whipped through the turbulent air of the cabin. A brilliant flash of blue light illuminated Wendy for a split second, and when it passed, the UFO’s engine noise had faded. The vehicle had gone into a powerless dive, with the rushing air spinning it this way and that, as if its pilot had suddenly given up all control.
“What was that?” Dipper yelped, as he blinked his eyes to clear the spots. “What happened? We’re losing altitude! Wendy, what’s--! Wendy?”
A change seemed to have come over her. She was still seated, just the way she’d been. Still just as sweaty as she was, still clad in her full armor. But all of a sudden, she wasn’t excited or laughing or yelling, she was just sitting still. Her hands were no longer gripping the controls, but rather held in her lap, seemingly clutched around something small. She didn’t react. She just sat there, mouth half open, eyes glazed over, staring down, entranced, at whatever it was she held.
In a situation of any less peril, Dipper would have been curious. But survival was foremost on his mind at the moment, so he grabbed the shoulder of her armor, and shook her. “WENDY! Wendy are you okay? Wendy, please wake up! Are you okay?!?”
She blinked, pulled whatever it was a little closer to her chest, and her head slowly rotated to look at him.
Her eyes met his.
“Dude.” Her voice was small, almost inaudible. And she had the strangest, saddest, most far-away look in her eyes.
“Wendy! What’s wrong?” Dipper pulled his hands away. “I mean, I’m sorry I shouldn’t’ve shook you but I-”
“Nothing…” Wendy muttered. “Nothing’s wrong… Nothing… Nothing…” She blinked, and turned her gaze back forward. Her eyes landed on the window, and she shoved whatever she’d been holding into her pocket.
She seemed on top of things again. “I’m okay…” She whispered. “I’m okay… OKAY.” Her voice regained its strength, and a smile broke out on her face. “OKAY LET’S DO THIS!” She grabbed the joysticks, spun them left, then up, then forward, and now the vehicle was stabilized. She pulled both sticks as far back as they’d go, and the ship curved away from its imminent impact with the ground.
Now they were gliding low across the treetops. “Okay… One of the robots didn’t come loose with the others!” Wendy informed him. “Hang onto something dude!”
“Wait, what? How do you kn—”
She twisted both sticks as far to the right as they went. The artificial gravity engines on one side of the ship swapped polarity completely, and the vehicle began spinning. The force of the rotation pressed Dipper into the side of his seat, and Wendy into the side of her own seat, almost on top of him. His inner ear gave up any attempt at determining up-and-down, and all he could do was squint his eyes shut and cry out. “WE-E-E-E-E-E-NDY-Y-Y WHA-A-A-A-AT--!”

The robot lion weighed roughly 4 tons. Which sounds like a lot, but its hardened titanium claws could normally take this weight easily; actions like climbing and grappling were second nature to it, and once it got these hooks gripped into something, there was little way to pry them loose. Especially so now, as it watched though terrified eyes as the landscape sped by below, and all its instincts told it that the slightest misstep would be its undoing. Its hooks were dug deep into the vehicle’s frame, and there they would stay.
But as the wing rocked and jerked and spun ever faster beneath it, the centrifugal force began to weigh on it. Stress began to build, half again, then twice, then 3 times its own body weight. 12 tons of force. 2 front paws, so 6 tons per paw. 4 hooks per paw, so 1.5 tons per hook.
There comes a point when enough is enough.
5 of the titanium claws tore loose, and the other 3 snapped, and then there was nothing beneath its feet, and it was falling toward the trees.
In much the same manner as Earthly cats, it twisted itself around to land on its feet. Its eyes scanned over the approaching ground, and saw that it was going to land in a shallow streambed. It angled its feet to match the contours of the rocks and slope.
To no avail.
The impact tore it open, and shattered the frame in its legs and back.
So it lay there among the wet stones, and it never moved again. Perhaps its eyes glanced about helplessly for a few minutes. Perhaps its antennae twitched and extended as it tried to call for help. But it was in the same place it had always been fated to be: lying in a stream with a broken back, paralyzed, watching its fluids empty into the water, feeling its energy and life fizzle away.
There was another reality it couldn’t have remembered; a reality which might have happened if the pilot hadn’t dislodged it. A reality where it would have fought a brave young human, and died in this same exact place. It would have been these same rocks, these same trees, almost the exact same injuries, and this same pose. Everything would have been identical. It was a cruel sort of fate that brought it again to this scene of death. A redoing of undone history, a natural closure of sorts.
Everything was just exactly the same as it would have been. All except for the young human, whom the future had spared.

A minute later, maybe less, maybe more, the alien spacecraft descended above the Mystery Shack. It wobbled a little as it hovered into something vaguely resembling a standstill, bumped once into the side of the building, tumbled the last few meters, and settled to the ground upside-down.
Its engines wined tiredly as it rolled itself back right-side-up, and finally came to a rest right between Soos’ truck and the Stans’ RV. As if nothing in the world were more natural than a spaceship in a parking lot. As if everything in the universe, right down to the smallest detail, was all going exactly according to plan.
“Oh… Wow, that was pretty crazy, huh?” Dipper laughed. “Stupid machine felt like it was trying to kill me…”
Wendy released the controls, and sat there for a moment looking at them with a sort of detached, even nervous demeanor. She was perfectly motionless, except for slow breathing.
“Hey…” Dipper frowned. “You okay?”
“Uh… I… I…” She turned fully to face him, and looked him up and down.
He met her eye. He didn’t recognize her expression and couldn’t describe it, something between happy and sad and tired. But something about it made him feel… Kind of cold inside. Like the grim and frightened words of a thousand damning prophecies. His smile slowly disappeared, and he glanced side to side, wondering if perhaps there was something else he should know about. His eyes landed back on hers.
“Hey…” He asked again. “Are you okay?”
She swallowed. “Uh… Yeah. Yeah. Another happy landing, right?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Uh… Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty crazy, huh? Good job, uh. Flying the ship. Piloting. You’re, uh… I mean, that was pretty awesome… Of you.”
“…Thanks…”
“…Yeah.”
They stood there awkwardly for a few seconds, until Wendy quietly asked. “…C-can I hug you?”
“Uh…” Dipper blinked. “Sure.” He spread his arms.
Wendy bent down to his level, and pulled him close. Her fingers dug into his hair, her head pressed into his neck, and she squeezed. He found himself lifted off the ground completely, and not able to breath quite as easily as he might like. It was warm and close and still in her arms, and he felt like he needed to say something.
But neither said anything.

Mabel found herself sitting in Robbie’s van, wearing her old clothes, holding Waddles. She turned her head toward the driver’s seat, to tell Robbie that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to head down into the bunker. But Robbie wasn’t there.
She turned her head back forward, and saw Ford’s metal decoy tree, retracted into the ground by about 20 feet. She saw the spiral staircase extended around the rim, and realized that Robbie must already be down there.
The time jump had been off.
“OH NO NO NO NO…!” Mabel leapt out the door of the van, sprinted across the trail and down the stairs, to pound on the metal door at the bottom. “No nonono Robbie come out! I didn’t mean it! I shouldn’t’ve sent you down there! Come back! I… Oh… Oh no, oh no… Okay. Okay, he’s free. He’s free and you’re in there too and… OOOOH UGH…”
Waddles sniffed at her ankle curiously. She picked him up and hugged him for support.
She looked around. Okay… Well, I can’t just go in after him. Sam would just kill me too… Or… Wait, no I guess he’s not named ‘Sam’ anymore. Now he’s just ‘The Shifter’. He hasn’t named himself yet. He hasn’t even become his own character yet. He doesn’t even know who he is or what he’s going to do. He’s almost… Innocent… NO NO STOP, DON’T THINK ABOUT THAT NOW! You need to focus Mabel!
She climbed back up to the top of the stairs, and stood gazing down at the door. Wait a minute. She realized. The time machine is still somewhere around. Wendy has it! That means… That means Robbie isn’t in any danger at all! We can just come back and save him whenever we get around to it! Later today or even tomorrow! It works! Easy peasie!
Mabel turned to the lever on the metal tree. Now all she had to do was make sure the Shifter stayed sealed down there… A quick trick shot from her grappling hook pulled it into the closed position.
The secret entrance creaked and groaned and rumbled and raised back up closed again, sealing Robbie down there with the Shifter.
“Okay, aaaaaany minute now…” Mabel bit her lip. “Aaaaaaany minute…”
Just as she suspected, Robbie appeared beside her in a flash of light. He looked a little shook-up, and he was blinking in the light, and he had some alien mucus on the collar of his shirt where he’d been grabbed, but for the most part he looked a’ight. And he was also bleeding from his nose, and the blood was red, so that means he must, in fact, be the real deal.
“ROBBIE!” She latched onto him and hugged him very tight. “I knew you’d be okay!”
“AHH the monster is free!” Robbie announced. “And there’s also a… A weird person down there!” He stuttered and frowned as he tried to put it all together. “She said I was a sucky Robbie, and then she punched me in the nose! None of this makes any sense!”
“Oh, that was probably just Wendy.” Mabel explained. “We have a time machine now! It’s a big long story that I can’t tell anyone because it’s a secret.”
“…Oh…” Robbie rubbed his nose, and the expression on his face said that this was all very sucky and unfair. “Like… Stupid… Like, I AM Robbie… What’s she mean I’m a sucky Robbie?”
“Oh, she just means that before we got the time machine and undid everything, the Shifter killed you and took your place, and Tambry liked him more than you.”
“HE WHAT?!? SHE WHAT?!? LIKE, LIKE, LIKE! LIKE… LIKE STUPID!”
“Yeeeeeeah maybe there’s a lesson to be learned here, huh?” Mabel elbowed him with a wink.
“Like what?”
“Uh…” She came up blank. “Like, uh… I dunno. Be excellent to each other!”
“Like, stupid…” Robbie mumbled again under his breath. “…Time travel, huh… And he… He went out with Tambry… Like, how MUCH did Tambry like him?”
“Weeeell…” Mabel transitioned easily to this new conversation topic, and began to count on her fingers. “She made 5 individual facepage posts, one of them edited to add more ‘very’s, as well as 4 bumblr posts, and 6 chirper posts. That’s bleventeen status updates in total. Apparently, there was some kinda romantic meal, a real deep heart-to-heart, and some kissing.”
“KISSING?” Robbie spun around and glared down at the forest floor. He stomped his foot, as if the shifter would be able to hear all the way down beneath the bedrock. “You were gonna kiss MY girl, you stupid, fat, gross, slimy girlfriend-kissing, life-stealing, better-Robbie-being stupid jerk? I’LL SHOW YOU! I’LL HAVE, LIKE, MORE ROMANTIC MEALS! AND THEN! THEN THERE WILL BE MORE KISSING! AND THEN THERE’S GONNA BE, LIKE, MUSIC OR SOMETHING YOU STUPID STUPID STUPID…” He irately twisted his face one way and then the other, and his fingerless gloves clenched and unclenched as he raged at his new rival.
“Weeeeell, it’s alright now though, isn’t it?” Mabel smiled.
“He’d still be kissing my girl… Stupid…” Robbie mumbled. “I guess it’s a good thing time travel is a thing…”
“Yeah…” Mabel laughed, thinking how Robbie didn’t know half of it. “Yeah, it really is, huh?”
“…So Wendy has the ‘time machine’?”
“Uh… Oops, wait, did I tell you that?”
“…Yeah…”
“I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“Well… Uh… Do you think she’d let me borrow it?” Robbie asked after a moment’s thought. “Because, like, I still feel really bad about hypnotizing her last Summer, and it’d be great if I could, like, go back and—”
“NO you can’t have it in fact I shouldn’t even be telling you this because it’s a secret it’s classified government business move along sir nothing to see here.” Mabel informed him. “…And, uh…” She chewed her lip. “It’s also magic. It can only be used by, uh… Girls. Girls of pure heart. So sorry.”
“Oh… Okay…” Robbie scratched his head. “Yeah, I guess I’m not a girl, huh.”
“Yeah… And your heart isn’t pure.”
“Well…! Okay, yeah…”
“Yeah… And it’s a super secret secret too, so don’t tell anybody about it, alright?” Mabel reminded him.
“Yeah…”
“Like, seriously, actually, please don’t. Because we’ll mind wipe you if you do. We have the means. I’m not bluffing, you better watch out, we’ll come for you.”
“Geez, okay.”
“Yeah…”
“Yeah…”
“Yeah… And hey, look on the bright side!” She smiled. “If you hadn’t hypnotized Wendy, then she might not have broken up with you!”
“Well… Wait, what? How is that the bright side? That sucked.”
“Well think about it! Wendy wasn’t right for you!” Mabel told him. “She’s a hip, rustic tomboy who likes old movies and stuffed animals and stupidly dangerous shenanigans and is okay with living up in the hills with slow internet. She never would’ve really appreciated you for being the dark, edgy, delightfully devilish scoundrel you are… But the true love of your life on the other hand…”
Hmm… Robbie remembered how much Tambry appreciated his tight pants and eyeliner and the way he like totally shredded the guitar. Much more than Wendy… “Ugh… Yeah… Hrrrgh… HMMMRRRGGGJAARRARGH all right!” He growled at Mabel. “So. Tambry. I’ll drop you off at the Shack, but then I gotta get to the concert. Gotta see her… How many posts did you say she made about how great a Robbie the Shapeshifter was?”
“Bleventeen or so.”
“I’ll show him…” Robbie clenched a fist, and stomped off toward his van. “I’ll show him good… You mark my words, Girl Dipper: by the end of THIS week, THIS Robbie will have Tambry making TWENTY posts about how great he is… And then he’s gonna, like, get MARRIED or something maybe. It’s gonna be EPIC and THIS Robbie is gonna, gonna… Why, this Robbie is gonna show that stupid, good-for-nothing slime-head how to REALLY show a girl a good time doggonit by gosh by golly oh my friggin’ geez…”
“That’s the lesson to be learned!” Mabel encouraged him, as she climbed into the passenger seat. “I’m glad you learned it! …Wait, are you really gonna ask her to marry you?!?”
“I-What?” He fumbled and dropped his keys. “Wait, no, I didn’t mean… No, not actually! I mean… Not yet, I mean… I mean NO! Ugh, stupid, stupid…”
“Ha ha! But you said it though! If you promise not to tell anybody about time travel, I promise not to tell her about your wild fantasies!”
“FINE! UGH! GOSH! Stupid stupid stupid…” He started the vehicle, and the engine puttered to life.
“Alright!” Mabel turned and pointed up the road toward the Mystery Shack. “AWAY, my valiant chauffeur!” She commanded him. “I think it’s time we wash our hands of this icky business, and barge our way bravely onward toward the FUTURE!”
“Stupid…”
“HOMEWARD!”

Wendy gripped her fingers around the upper rim of the airlock, and hoisted herself out before extending a hand down to help him up.
As she set him down beside her, he glanced around the top of the ship’s hull. He noticed a large jagged hole that had been broken in the glass paneling. Beneath, the metal framework and engine components were scarred and dented; the unmistakable wounds of grinding saws.
“Woah…” Dipper blinked, as he approached the damage. “You, uh… You must’ve been right about the lion staying attached…”
“…Yeah, ‘course I was right.” Wendy grunted. “I’m… Like… Always right. And stuff.”
Dipper reached into the hole and touched one of the dented pipes inside. He almost burned his hand. “OW! Augh. Wow, that could’ve been bad… Hey, how did you know anyway?”
“Oh…” Wendy shrugged. “Like… Uh… Uh… Like, I guess one side of the ship kinda felt a little heavy… And I think I heard it moving around out there, so yeah… Anyway, let’s go dude. Before it… I dunno, I guess it’s not gonna explode, but still.”
“Yeah…”
They slid down the side of the curved hull, dropped off the rim into the grass, limped across the yard to the side porch, and plopped down on the sofa.
They sat in an easy sort of silence for a few minutes, occasionally groaning or muttering or massaging their aching limbs.
Wendy began to unbluckle and loosen her armor. Piece after piece she removed, and tossed them all on the porch beside her. As the bulky clutter came off, she flexed her limbs and stared at herself in quiet amazement. She’d felt like she’d been sick for days now. The radiation poisoning from the crash had nearly destroyed her immune system, and she’d spent every moment since: the exploration, the imprisonment, the escape, the fight, feeling weak and small and impotent. Like half the woman she ought to be. But now, as the armor came off, she realized that it really was all gone. None of it had ever happened. Aside from the injuries and the stresses of today alone… She was strong again. She was herself again. Hesitantly, she lifted up her shirt to inspect her belly, and saw that the stab wound was gone, without a scar or a memory. They’d undone it. They really had undone it…
She looked back at Dipper. He was having quite a difficult time getting the shoulder pads up past his head, having forgotten that he needed to loosen the straps first. After a couple seconds of struggling with the plastic plates up around his chin, he let it back down, fumbled momentarily with the buckles, and tried again. It worked the second time. He tossed the pads down next to Wendy’s, then took a moment to straighten his hair down over his birthmark, and subtly readjusted his jeans for some private reason. He saw she had her shirt lifted up, and quickly looked away.
He was trying ever-so-slightly too hard not to look like a dork. And failing, naturally.
Just like normal.
As she put her shirt down, she suddenly stifled a laugh. “You’re a lot of trouble, you know that?”
“Huh?”
“Oh, uh… Oh, nothing.”
“Oh.” Dipper fiddled his thumbs in his lap, and wondered for a second why things were suddenly so awkward. For most of this week, things had been surprisingly non-awkward… When was the easy banter supposed to start up again? Whatever happened to that? “Uh…” He decided he may as well speak up. “Yeah, that was pretty crazy, huh?” He nodded back at the ship.
“That’s the third time you’ve said that exact same sentence in as many minutes.” Wendy gave a small smile.
“Oh… Really… Oops. Yeah. Well. Uh.”
“Yeah…” She chuckled. “That really was something else…” She seemed as eager as he was to talk again, but she had no idea what to say either.
“Maybe if we do that again…” Dipper thought out loud. “I’ll drive.”
“You…” She blinked, and slowly realized that he was joking. “Aww… Oh, c’mon man, don’t gimme that.” She smirked at him. “That was fun… I mean… I mean hey, when’s the last time you saw somebody bust out moves like that with a spaceship, huh?”
A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “…You drive spaceships about as well as you drive cars.”
“Yeah, well…” She laughed again as she struggled to think of a retort. Indeed, she was struggling just to remember today. Struggling to remember the whole fateful flight: those events which had transpired objective moments ago, but which felt to her like a foggy, distant dream, overshadowed by all the terribleness since… “Well…” Slowly, as she searched her brain for happier thoughts, the details began to come back to her. “Well, you read Alien-ese about as well as you read Spanish.” She prodded. “‘That’s the reactor ignition’ you said. ‘push that button’ you said. ‘try those switches over there’ you said… But it wasn’t any of those, was it?”
“No… No, we made it out by dumb luck…” Dipper admitted.
“Yeah…” Wendy closed her eyes and remembered the first part of today. Remembered it better now, and fondly.
“Ugh… Sorry.” Dipper sighed.
She blinked. “Yeah… Hey, you know what, I’m sorry too, ha ha… I think I only noticed that one last lion at the last second. Almost blew us up… I bet… I guess I am a pretty bad pilot all-in-all…”
“Ahh… It’s fine…” Dipper grabbed the collar of his shirt, and turned it towards her to show the stain. “It’s just barf. It washes out.”
“Ha ha… Ooooh… That’s gross dude.” She yarded one of her boots off, and threw it at him. It was quite sweaty on the inside, and he instinctively recoiled from the reek even as he caught it.
“Augh! Wow, you’re gross!” He threw the it back at her.
“No you.” She threw it back.
“No you...”
Sometime during all this, a gothic, edgy purple van came rolling up the drive.
“Uh oh.” Wendy frowned, and missed catching the boot. It hit her in the face.
“What?” He followed her gaze.
“Robbie.”
“Uh oh.”
“Umm… Let me do the talking.”
“Right.”
As soon as the van’s driver noticed the UFO (which was taking up about 5 parking spaces, one of which he’d been aiming for) the van’s brakes squealed and it slid to a stop, its wheels kicking up little clouds of dust.
The driver-side door opened, and Robbie peaked out, frowning at the spaceship.
With a sigh, Wendy made to stand up. “LOOK DUDE…” She announced in his direction.
Robbie looked at her, and in an instant ducked back into his van. “NEVER MIND ALL THAT!” He recited.
“Huh?” Wendy frowned.
“Wait, what?” Dipper leaned past her.
“I don’t want any more of this!” He announced. “So NEVER MIND ALL THAT! I swear I didn’t see anything! Aliens aren’t real! Monsters aren’t real, spaceships aren’t real and time travel ain’t real and that thing right there is just swamp gas! Just leave me the heck out of this, and don’t brain wipe me!”
“Brain wipe?”
“Swamp gas?”
His head turned away from the window. “Alright, I gotta go! Tambry needs me!” He commanded. “Get out of my van, Girl-Dipper! Ride’s over!”
The passenger door opened and closed, and the van spun around and sped off down the road.
“IF YOU CAN’T TAKE THE HEAT STAY OUT OF THE KITCHEN!” Dipper cupped his hands and yelled after him.
“YEAH, YOU HAVE FUN IN BORING TOWN, DUDE!” Wendy added.
“NEVER MIND ALL THAT!” Robbie’s voice carried over the wind as he disappeared into the distance.
The dust cloud settled, revealing Mabel and Waddles standing there blinking.
“Hey there Mabel.” Dipper waved. “Where’ve you guys been all day?”
“D-DIPPER!” Mabel squealed, and began to run toward them.
He didn’t expect her to cross the entire yard quite as fast as she did, and so didn’t raise his hands to shield himself until she’d already tackled him off his feet, and they’d landed in a pile and rolled off the porch into the grass. “YOU’RE OKAY YOU’RE OKAY I’M SO GLAD TO SEE YOU!” Mabel screeched.
“AUGH! OW! HEY! Yes! I’m okay! Yes, we’re both okay! What the heck are you freaking out about?”
“Uh…” Mabel glanced at Wendy, who made a sign of subtly zipping her lips. “Uh, nothing, actually!” Mabel shrugged, released Dipper from the embrace, and helped him back to his feet. “So hey! Wow! You escaped from the Forest of Daggers! That’s cool!” She nodded. “And you’re home really fast! How’d you do it?”
“Umm…” Dipper frowned. “You did see the big spaceship that’s literally sitting right there, didn’t you?”
“Oh yeeeeeeah.” Mabel turned and looked at it. “Thaaaat. Wait, so it actually flies?!?”
“How the heck would it have gotten here if-”
“So not only you survived, but it survived too!” Mabel realized outloud. “We actually have a real live UFO to play with now!”
“No!” Dipper put his hands on his hips. “Okay, first of all, it’s not a toy, it’s a vehiclee! A tool! And a fairly dangerous tool, so that makes it about the exact opposite of a plaything. And secondly, it’s not a UFO. ’UFO’ stands for ‘Unidentified Flying Object.’ Whereas that machine is a nuclear-powered sub-light cargo shuttle manufactured on Trilazzxx Beta, as exploratory equipment for Colonial Vessel 46.18’\. That is, a perfectly well identified extraterrestrial spacecraft.”
“OH MY GEEEEEEEE…! Literally everything is going exactly incredibly perfectly! This is the very best day ever then! What are you guys doing out here?!? We’ve got to tell everyone we have a UFO to play with!” Mabel grabbed Dipper’s wrist and more-or less drug him inside the Shack.
“Hey, where you going with him?” Wendy raised a fist tiredly. “We weren’t done talking and stuff!”
“Soos! Melody! Grunkle Stan! Great Uncle Ford!” Mabel yelled at the top of her lungs. “You guys have to get out here! Throw a party! Load the confetti! Prepare the fattened calf! Dipper and Wendy got back safe! Everyone’s okay! AND BOY do they have a story! There’s aliens and aliens spaceships and all kinds of amazing things that happened! Tell them, Dipper! Tell them how we WON!”
“DUDE!” Soos set down his plunger, and raised his eyepatch. “For real, girl-bro?”
“What’s going on?” Melody called from gift shop.
“Hey, quiet down, some of us are trying to sleep!” Stan opened one eye and growled from the recliner.
“It’s 3 in the afternoon, Stan!” Ford stepped out of his lab, and gave Stan’s recliner a kick as he walked past. “Look alive, this sounds important!”
The whole group filed out the front door and out into the parking lot, where they stood around the spaceship, oohing and ahhing and poking and prodding and riddling Dipper with all manner of questions.
Wendy found herself all alone on the porch, watching the procession in her periphery, feeling quite detached indeed, like an alien herself. So she eased herself back down deeper into the couch, and put her legs up on one of the trash cans. “Yeah. If anybody wants me.” She muttered, as she pulled her hat down over her eyes. “I’ll be right here.”

There was a LOT of hubbub for the next hour and a half. Soos and Mabel insisted on playing in and around the ship, Stan put up signs to keep tourists away, Melody made everyone big, spicy victory omelets, and Ford called up McGucket to have him come over and give the thing a professional inspection.
Plans were made.
Dipper told them about the ghosts they’d found, and about the origins of the forest, and about the idea to destroy the entire thing using a tractor beam from the main ship. Everybody agreed that this was an excellent idea, and decided to go down there tomorrow to set it up.
As expected, Mabel didn’t like that plan so much. So she paid more attention to what they heard from McGucket: From his inspection of the shuttle, he’d determined that it was actually in a surprisingly good condition. A few repairs to the pressure seals, some patches to the damaged reactor, a refill of its coolant, and a cleaning of its crusty outer hull, and it might be able to fly about almost like new. Maybe even make it into space…
An idea began to brew, way, way back in the thinky parts of Mabel’s head. And she was pretty sure that this idea, unlike her regular ideas, was actually a good one…
Throughout the whole thing, Dipper found himself quite uncomfortably at the center of attention. Everybody seemed to want to give him a hug or a handshake, and hear from him what all had happened, and when, and where, and how the devil he’d done it. Ford was proud of him, Stan was proud of him, Soos just wanted to hear about those swag robot dudes… And for some reason, Mabel never stopped singing his praise. It was as if to her, any one of today’s discoveries or adventures was less important than Dipper simply being here, and being the hero.
It was enough to induce a mild headache.
He couldn’t make her hear sense, he couldn’t get out of the spotlight, he couldn’t even quite adequately communicate how little credit he deserved for what happened today; after all, Wendy was the one who did most of the heavy lifting, Wendy was the one who flew the ship, and Wendy saved his life more times than he could count.
But Mabel was too excited, and everyone had too many questions and thoughts and congratulations, and nobody wanted to leave the ship (and the victory omelets) to walk across the entire yard to talk to the reclining redhead.
But he wanted to. Frequently through it all, his eyes kept straying back to the porch, just to make sure she was still there. A quiet, doubting voice kept whispering in his ear, threatening all the terrible things that might happen. Maybe she’ll get bored over there. Maybe she’ll go home. Maybe she’s jealous that everyone’s ignoring her. Maybe she’s angry because Mabel’s giving me all the glory. Maybe she remembers why I want to talk to her, and doesn’t want to talk about it. Maybe she’s like Robbie: maybe she’s had enough of this adventuring business for one lifetime, and wants to just go home. Maybe by now, all she wants to do is obey her dad, and go get a good job somewhere far away.
Maybe, if he didn’t keep looking over at her, he’d miss her leaving.
It was almost an hour until he could slip away, and to do it, he had to convince Soos that the ship could be turned on by speaking the magic word. While everybody tried to help him guess it, Dipper ducked out and hurried back toward the Shack.
He dashed into the gift shop, glanced around briefly to make sure Stan wasn’t watching, then grabbed a pair of ice cream sandwiches from the cooler. He almost sprinted through the kitchen to the back door, and came through so fast that he almost tripped over her own shoes.
And Wendy was still there.
And she was fast asleep.
He stood there watching for a minute, with an ice cream in both hands, feeling like an idiot. Finally he set one down on the couch beside her, then sat himself down on the other side of the couch. It felt wrong to eat his before she ate hers, and it also felt wrong to wake her to eat hers, and equally wrong to just put both of them back.
So he just watched her sleep.
Something in the back of his mind was screaming at him, telling him that something wasn’t right, that he should do something, and that she wasn’t okay; he couldn’t understand what it was, but the feeling was strong. Finally, as if she could hear his thoughts, she suddenly moved. Her body spasmed and she sat upright with a gasp. Her eyes were wide and wild, and they darted around the porch frantically, until they finally settled on Dipper. He frowned at her in confusion as she slowly calmed back down. “Oh…” She sighed, and blinked slowly. “Oh… H-hey. Hey dude.”
“Uh… Hi Wendy. Uh… Hi. Yeah. Good to see you.”
“Yeah… How long was I out…?”
“Uh… An hour or so? I dunno.”
“Man…” She rubbed her face through her hands. “Is an hour enough time to have nightmares?”
“Is that what happened?”
“Yeah… I just… Ah, never mind, I’m sorry man, I’m just… Just really tired.” She leaned back again, and collapsed on the cushions. “Just really… Really… Tired.”
“…Sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say.
She made a great show of trying to lift one arm, only to have it fall back down. “Yep. Too tired. Wendy’s paralyzed from the neck down. Stop the presses, it’s for real this time.”
“Ha ha… Oh… Well, I got you ice cream.”
She noticed the treat sitting next to her hand, and blinked slowly. “…Ice cream…”
“Yeah… I mean, if you’re too tired for ice cream, then I guess I can put it back or…”
“HMM Ice Cream…” She snatched it up and began to unwrap it.
“Oh.”
“Did you pay for this?”
“No.”
“Swag.” She took a bite. “What Stan don’t know won’t hurt us, right?”
“Ha ha! Yeah…” He finally opened his and began to eat it, and everything was silent again. It was an awkward silence. Felt like something should be said, but there wasn’t really anything to say. He scratched nervously at one of his robo-bug bites, and ate his ice cream too slowly to keep it from dripping.
“Hey, uh… Are you okay?” He finally asked.
“Uh?” She blinked at him.
“Like… I mean, sorry, it’s just that, with the nightmare and the being tired and the… The thing in the middle of all the flight where you just… Let go of the controls and went all quiet. What was that? Did something happen? I mean… I mean, are you okay? Everything good?”
“Oh yeah…” Wendy shrugged. “Yeah, I’m good. Everything’s good.”
“Okay… I just thought it might be a seizure, or some kind of heart attack, or… Like, one of those things where it turns out your friend has this debilitating disease and she’s gonna die or something…”
“…Dude… Chill…”
“Okay.”
Her eyes drifted down to her ice cream. “You know.” She said.
“What?”
“Ice cream… For some reason I thought there’d be ice cream. After everything ended, after everything was okay, once we finally had a chance to sit down… I dreamed that you and I would sit down together, right here, and eat this ice cream… It’s just… Just the picture I had.” She took another bite. “…It could’ve turned out worse. A jillion things could’ve gone different. Things could have exploded or been destroyed or burned or irradiated, good people could’ve been hurt, or… But instead we’re eating ice cream. Like the dream wasn’t a dream. Like it was… Something else. Like a vision of how it ought to be, and the way it really is… I dunno.”
Dipper nodded slowly with a confused frown, pretending to understand, then giving up. “…You lost me.” He said.
“I know…” Wendy sighed. “…Don’t worry about it… I’m just glad that… I mean I’m just glad.” She let her gaze wander out across the valley, as the warm, bright sun slowly drooped toward the cliffs, bringing the afternoon to a peaceful close. “I’m just glad.”
“Oh.”
They sat for a few minutes more in silence. This time it was better. It felt like an easy silence.
Wendy slowly stretched, and a breath of air slowly escaped through her nose. Dipper watched a single melty drop of ice cream fell from her hand to her jeans as she yawned, then felt like yawning himself. He leaned back against the cushions.
He felt happy. And he could feel that she was too.
Dipper took a deep breath.
Wendy took a deep breath.
“So…” He began.
“So…” She began at the exact same time. This seemed to cause some form of mutual interruption, forcing them to both stop talking.
“Go ahead.”
“No, you go ahead.”
“Okay…” She continued. “So… So, if I remember right… We started a conversation earlier that we never got to finish.”
“Oh…” Dipper stammered. “Oh yeah. Uh… We did, huh? Yeah…” He took a bite of his ice cream.
“About how this adventure might very well be our last.” Wendy continued. “About how if we’re not careful, we might never hang out again. About how I’ll miss you and you’ll miss me and neither of us really want that to happen and, like, what should we do about that…?”
“Uh… Uh… Yeah…” He ate his ice cream slightly too fast and got brain freeze. He made a mental note to bring it down a notch.
“Hmm.” Wendy grunted.
Finally Dipper was staring down at the finished popsicle stick, wiping the last little bits of strawberry gunk off his face. His ice cream was gone, and with it had gone his one excuse to not speak. He opened his mouth. Then he closed it, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Wendy, uh… I was wondering if tomorrow… Uh… If… Uh…”
“What?”
He looked at her.
She sure was pretty.
“Uh…” A spell of itchiness seized him about that time, and it got just a little too much to bear. “Uh… Hmm.”
“What?” She repeated.
“…Never mind.”
“No no no no!” She insisted, and overcame her tiredness enough to sit up straighter. “We started a conversation earlier, and now we better finish it. And you just started a sentence just now, so you darn better finish that too. If you really do have something you want to say, you darn better man up and speak up, or who knows; one of us could die in the meantime. You never know when you'll never have another chance, so take it now. SPEAK man.”
“UH!” He squirmed nervously. “No, it’s not… Wait, do you know what I’m going to say?”
“I know I didn’t come all this way just to listen to you stutter.”
Dipper thought that was a weird thing to say, but he could tell she meant well. And for the first time, it dawned on him that she might actually want it. “Uh…” He stuttered one last time, then set his jaw, and finally said. “Okay.” Then he looked her in the eye and, with a truly monumental effort of courage, opened his mouth and said. “Wendy… Do you want to go on a date with me tomorrow?”

She finished off her ice cream, and flicked the popsicle stick into the bushes. A smile might have twitched at the corner of her mouth. Then it stopped twitching, and spread across her whole face. “You know dude.” She beamed. “I gotta be perfectly straight with ya… For a while there, I honestly thought you’d never ask.”

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Chapter 28: It Is Undone

Author’s Note: Although this may seem like a last-chapter sort of chapter, it isn't. It's the first of the last chapters, more like.

The escape.
The flight.
The ship.
Moments before the crash.
Dipper gripped his fingers as tight as he could into the armrests, as he fought to hold his position against the chaotic surging of the saucer’s gravity drive fields. In the seat beside him, Wendy struggled with the controls, trying to keep the vehicle a good distance from the ground, whilst going in a generally forwardly direction. Judging by the furrows in her brow and the sweat on her knuckles, it must be almost as hard as it looked.
Through it all, he tried to get his bearings. They needed to land safely, and as quickly as possible, because there wasn’t any telling how long this ship would hold together. Through the ship’s glass dome, off in the far distance, he spied the peak of the Multi-bear’s lair. Which means the town must be somewhere West of here… Which way was West? Wendy slipped up for a moment and the ship tipped up on its side, which coincidentally let Dipper find the sun as a reference. It was mid-afternoon in Summer, so West should be… That way! “Uh… Go tha… Turn Starboard! T-t-two-o’-clock!” He squealed, and raised a hand to point.
“Yeah, yeah, I got you, fam!” Wendy spun the ship.
“No no! Too far!”
“It’s touchy, it’s touchy… Oooookay! Yeah, here we go. There!”
“Waitwaitwait now pull up! PULL UP!”
They missed a ridge by a narrow margin, weaved between another two hills, and then Wendy finally got it high enough that they were high enough to see across the valley.
There were the hanging cliffs! The town should be a mile or so in front of them.
With their destination in sight, Dipper was starting to really get a feeling they were going to make it. Sure, they’d had a long day, what with the spiders trying to eat them and the lions trying to rip them in half, and the alien robot ghosts and the new mission to destroy the forest and all that biz, but now, they were actually home free.
Dipper was wrong, of course.
He couldn’t have known about the one robot lion that had stayed attached to the ship, just outside their view from the dome. He couldn’t have known that its saws were less than a minute from puncturing the nuclear reactor’s pressure chamber. He didn’t know that the resulting crash would send the ship to oblivion, and that he and the lion would follow it soon after.
He didn’t know any of that.
But he did notice when something strange happened.
A small blast, and a sound like rushing air, whipped through the turbulent air of the cabin. A brilliant flash of blue light illuminated Wendy for a split second, and when it passed, the UFO’s engine noise had faded. The vehicle had gone into a powerless dive, with the rushing air spinning it this way and that, as if its pilot had suddenly given up all control.
“What was that?” Dipper yelped, as he blinked his eyes to clear the spots. “What happened? We’re losing altitude! Wendy, what’s--! Wendy?”
A change seemed to have come over her. She was still seated, just the way she’d been. Still just as sweaty as she was, still clad in her full armor. But all of a sudden, she wasn’t excited or laughing or yelling, she was just sitting still. Her hands were no longer gripping the controls, but rather held in her lap, seemingly clutched around something small. She didn’t react. She just sat there, mouth half open, eyes glazed over, staring down, entranced, at whatever it was she held.
In a situation of any less peril, Dipper would have been curious. But survival was foremost on his mind at the moment, so he grabbed the shoulder of her armor, and shook her. “WENDY! Wendy are you okay? Wendy, please wake up! Are you okay?!?”
She blinked, pulled whatever it was a little closer to her chest, and her head slowly rotated to look at him.
Her eyes met his.
“Dude.” Her voice was small, almost inaudible. And she had the strangest, saddest, most far-away look in her eyes.
“Wendy! What’s wrong?” Dipper pulled his hands away. “I mean, I’m sorry I shouldn’t’ve shook you but I-”
“Nothing…” Wendy muttered. “Nothing’s wrong… Nothing… Nothing…” She blinked, and turned her gaze back forward. Her eyes landed on the window, and she shoved whatever she’d been holding into her pocket.
She seemed on top of things again. “I’m okay…” She whispered. “I’m okay… OKAY.” Her voice regained its strength, and a smile broke out on her face. “OKAY LET’S DO THIS!” She grabbed the joysticks, spun them left, then up, then forward, and now the vehicle was stabilized. She pulled both sticks as far back as they’d go, and the ship curved away from its imminent impact with the ground.
Now they were gliding low across the treetops. “Okay… One of the robots didn’t come loose with the others!” Wendy informed him. “Hang onto something dude!”
“Wait, what? How do you kn—”
She twisted both sticks as far to the right as they went. The artificial gravity engines on one side of the ship swapped polarity completely, and the vehicle began spinning. The force of the rotation pressed Dipper into the side of his seat, and Wendy into the side of her own seat, almost on top of him. His inner ear gave up any attempt at determining up-and-down, and all he could do was squint his eyes shut and cry out. “WE-E-E-E-E-E-NDY-Y-Y WHA-A-A-A-AT--!”

The robot lion weighed roughly 4 tons. Which sounds like a lot, but its hardened titanium claws could normally take this weight easily; actions like climbing and grappling were second nature to it, and once it got these hooks gripped into something, there was little way to pry them loose. Especially so now, as it watched though terrified eyes as the landscape sped by below, and all its instincts told it that the slightest misstep would be its undoing. Its hooks were dug deep into the vehicle’s frame, and there they would stay.
But as the wing rocked and jerked and spun ever faster beneath it, the centrifugal force began to weigh on it. Stress began to build, half again, then twice, then 3 times its own body weight. 12 tons of force. 2 front paws, so 6 tons per paw. 4 hooks per paw, so 1.5 tons per hook.
There comes a point when enough is enough.
5 of the titanium claws tore loose, and the other 3 snapped, and then there was nothing beneath its feet, and it was falling toward the trees.
In much the same manner as Earthly cats, it twisted itself around to land on its feet. Its eyes scanned over the approaching ground, and saw that it was going to land in a shallow streambed. It angled its feet to match the contours of the rocks and slope.
To no avail.
The impact tore it open, and shattered the frame in its legs and back.
So it lay there among the wet stones, and it never moved again. Perhaps its eyes glanced about helplessly for a few minutes. Perhaps its antennae twitched and extended as it tried to call for help. But it was in the same place it had always been fated to be: lying in a stream with a broken back, paralyzed, watching its fluids empty into the water, feeling its energy and life fizzle away.
There was another reality it couldn’t have remembered; a reality which might have happened if the pilot hadn’t dislodged it. A reality where it would have fought a brave young human, and died in this same exact place. It would have been these same rocks, these same trees, almost the exact same injuries, and this same pose. Everything would have been identical. It was a cruel sort of fate that brought it again to this scene of death. A redoing of undone history, a natural closure of sorts.
Everything was just exactly the same as it would have been. All except for the young human, whom the future had spared.

A minute later, maybe less, maybe more, the alien spacecraft descended above the Mystery Shack. It wobbled a little as it hovered into something vaguely resembling a standstill, bumped once into the side of the building, tumbled the last few meters, and settled to the ground upside-down.
Its engines wined tiredly as it rolled itself back right-side-up, and finally came to a rest right between Soos’ truck and the Stans’ RV. As if nothing in the world were more natural than a spaceship in a parking lot. As if everything in the universe, right down to the smallest detail, was all going exactly according to plan.
“Oh… Wow, that was pretty crazy, huh?” Dipper laughed. “Stupid machine felt like it was trying to kill me…”
Wendy released the controls, and sat there for a moment looking at them with a sort of detached, even nervous demeanor. She was perfectly motionless, except for slow breathing.
“Hey…” Dipper frowned. “You okay?”
“Uh… I… I…” She turned fully to face him, and looked him up and down.
He met her eye. He didn’t recognize her expression and couldn’t describe it, something between happy and sad and tired. But something about it made him feel… Kind of cold inside. Like the grim and frightened words of a thousand damning prophecies. His smile slowly disappeared, and he glanced side to side, wondering if perhaps there was something else he should know about. His eyes landed back on hers.
“Hey…” He asked again. “Are you okay?”
She swallowed. “Uh… Yeah. Yeah. Another happy landing, right?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Uh… Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty crazy, huh? Good job, uh. Flying the ship. Piloting. You’re, uh… I mean, that was pretty awesome… Of you.”
“…Thanks…”
“…Yeah.”
They stood there awkwardly for a few seconds, until Wendy quietly asked. “…C-can I hug you?”
“Uh…” Dipper blinked. “Sure.” He spread his arms.
Wendy bent down to his level, and pulled him close. Her fingers dug into his hair, her head pressed into his neck, and she squeezed. He found himself lifted off the ground completely, and not able to breath quite as easily as he might like. It was warm and close and still in her arms, and he felt like he needed to say something.
But neither said anything.

Mabel found herself sitting in Robbie’s van, wearing her old clothes, holding Waddles. She turned her head toward the driver’s seat, to tell Robbie that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to head down into the bunker. But Robbie wasn’t there.
She turned her head back forward, and saw Ford’s metal decoy tree, retracted into the ground by about 20 feet. She saw the spiral staircase extended around the rim, and realized that Robbie must already be down there.
The time jump had been off.
“OH NO NO NO NO…!” Mabel leapt out the door of the van, sprinted across the trail and down the stairs, to pound on the metal door at the bottom. “No nonono Robbie come out! I didn’t mean it! I shouldn’t’ve sent you down there! Come back! I… Oh… Oh no, oh no… Okay. Okay, he’s free. He’s free and you’re in there too and… OOOOH UGH…”
Waddles sniffed at her ankle curiously. She picked him up and hugged him for support.
She looked around. Okay… Well, I can’t just go in after him. Sam would just kill me too… Or… Wait, no I guess he’s not named ‘Sam’ anymore. Now he’s just ‘The Shifter’. He hasn’t named himself yet. He hasn’t even become his own character yet. He doesn’t even know who he is or what he’s going to do. He’s almost… Innocent… NO NO STOP, DON’T THINK ABOUT THAT NOW! You need to focus Mabel!
She climbed back up to the top of the stairs, and stood gazing down at the door. Wait a minute. She realized. The time machine is still somewhere around. Wendy has it! That means… That means Robbie isn’t in any danger at all! We can just come back and save him whenever we get around to it! Later today or even tomorrow! It works! Easy peasie!
Mabel turned to the lever on the metal tree. Now all she had to do was make sure the Shifter stayed sealed down there… A quick trick shot from her grappling hook pulled it into the closed position.
The secret entrance creaked and groaned and rumbled and raised back up closed again, sealing Robbie down there with the Shifter.
“Okay, aaaaaany minute now…” Mabel bit her lip. “Aaaaaaany minute…”
Just as she suspected, Robbie appeared beside her in a flash of light. He looked a little shook-up, and he was blinking in the light, and he had some alien mucus on the collar of his shirt where he’d been grabbed, but for the most part he looked a’ight. And he was also bleeding from his nose, and the blood was red, so that means he must, in fact, be the real deal.
“ROBBIE!” She latched onto him and hugged him very tight. “I knew you’d be okay!”
“AHH the monster is free!” Robbie announced. “And there’s also a… A weird person down there!” He stuttered and frowned as he tried to put it all together. “She said I was a sucky Robbie, and then she punched me in the nose! None of this makes any sense!”
“Oh, that was probably just Wendy.” Mabel explained. “We have a time machine now! It’s a big long story that I can’t tell anyone because it’s a secret.”
“…Oh…” Robbie rubbed his nose, and the expression on his face said that this was all very sucky and unfair. “Like… Stupid… Like, I AM Robbie… What’s she mean I’m a sucky Robbie?”
“Oh, she just means that before we got the time machine and undid everything, the Shifter killed you and took your place, and Tambry liked him more than you.”
“HE WHAT?!? SHE WHAT?!? LIKE, LIKE, LIKE! LIKE… LIKE STUPID!”
“Yeeeeeeah maybe there’s a lesson to be learned here, huh?” Mabel elbowed him with a wink.
“Like what?”
“Uh…” She came up blank. “Like, uh… I dunno. Be excellent to each other!”
“Like, stupid…” Robbie mumbled again under his breath. “…Time travel, huh… And he… He went out with Tambry… Like, how MUCH did Tambry like him?”
“Weeeell…” Mabel transitioned easily to this new conversation topic, and began to count on her fingers. “She made 5 individual facepage posts, one of them edited to add more ‘very’s, as well as 4 bumblr posts, and 6 chirper posts. That’s bleventeen status updates in total. Apparently, there was some kinda romantic meal, a real deep heart-to-heart, and some kissing.”
“KISSING?” Robbie spun around and glared down at the forest floor. He stomped his foot, as if the shifter would be able to hear all the way down beneath the bedrock. “You were gonna kiss MY girl, you stupid, fat, gross, slimy girlfriend-kissing, life-stealing, better-Robbie-being stupid jerk? I’LL SHOW YOU! I’LL HAVE, LIKE, MORE ROMANTIC MEALS! AND THEN! THEN THERE WILL BE MORE KISSING! AND THEN THERE’S GONNA BE, LIKE, MUSIC OR SOMETHING YOU STUPID STUPID STUPID…” He irately twisted his face one way and then the other, and his fingerless gloves clenched and unclenched as he raged at his new rival.
“Weeeeell, it’s alright now though, isn’t it?” Mabel smiled.
“He’d still be kissing my girl… Stupid…” Robbie mumbled. “I guess it’s a good thing time travel is a thing…”
“Yeah…” Mabel laughed, thinking how Robbie didn’t know half of it. “Yeah, it really is, huh?”
“…So Wendy has the ‘time machine’?”
“Uh… Oops, wait, did I tell you that?”
“…Yeah…”
“I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“Well… Uh… Do you think she’d let me borrow it?” Robbie asked after a moment’s thought. “Because, like, I still feel really bad about hypnotizing her last Summer, and it’d be great if I could, like, go back and—”
“NO you can’t have it in fact I shouldn’t even be telling you this because it’s a secret it’s classified government business move along sir nothing to see here.” Mabel informed him. “…And, uh…” She chewed her lip. “It’s also magic. It can only be used by, uh… Girls. Girls of pure heart. So sorry.”
“Oh… Okay…” Robbie scratched his head. “Yeah, I guess I’m not a girl, huh.”
“Yeah… And your heart isn’t pure.”
“Well…! Okay, yeah…”
“Yeah… And it’s a super secret secret too, so don’t tell anybody about it, alright?” Mabel reminded him.
“Yeah…”
“Like, seriously, actually, please don’t. Because we’ll mind wipe you if you do. We have the means. I’m not bluffing, you better watch out, we’ll come for you.”
“Geez, okay.”
“Yeah…”
“Yeah…”
“Yeah… And hey, look on the bright side!” She smiled. “If you hadn’t hypnotized Wendy, then she might not have broken up with you!”
“Well… Wait, what? How is that the bright side? That sucked.”
“Well think about it! Wendy wasn’t right for you!” Mabel told him. “She’s a hip, rustic tomboy who likes old movies and stuffed animals and stupidly dangerous shenanigans and is okay with living up in the hills with slow internet. She never would’ve really appreciated you for being the dark, edgy, delightfully devilish scoundrel you are… But the true love of your life on the other hand…”
Hmm… Robbie remembered how much Tambry appreciated his tight pants and eyeliner and the way he like totally shredded the guitar. Much more than Wendy… “Ugh… Yeah… Hrrrgh… HMMMRRRGGGJAARRARGH all right!” He growled at Mabel. “So. Tambry. I’ll drop you off at the Shack, but then I gotta get to the concert. Gotta see her… How many posts did you say she made about how great a Robbie the Shapeshifter was?”
“Bleventeen or so.”
“I’ll show him…” Robbie clenched a fist, and stomped off toward his van. “I’ll show him good… You mark my words, Girl Dipper: by the end of THIS week, THIS Robbie will have Tambry making TWENTY posts about how great he is… And then he’s gonna, like, get MARRIED or something maybe. It’s gonna be EPIC and THIS Robbie is gonna, gonna… Why, this Robbie is gonna show that stupid, good-for-nothing slime-head how to REALLY show a girl a good time doggonit by gosh by golly oh my friggin’ geez…”
“That’s the lesson to be learned!” Mabel encouraged him, as she climbed into the passenger seat. “I’m glad you learned it! …Wait, are you really gonna ask her to marry you?!?”
“I-What?” He fumbled and dropped his keys. “Wait, no, I didn’t mean… No, not actually! I mean… Not yet, I mean… I mean NO! Ugh, stupid, stupid…”
“Ha ha! But you said it though! If you promise not to tell anybody about time travel, I promise not to tell her about your wild fantasies!”
“FINE! UGH! GOSH! Stupid stupid stupid…” He started the vehicle, and the engine puttered to life.
“Alright!” Mabel turned and pointed up the road toward the Mystery Shack. “AWAY, my valiant chauffeur!” She commanded him. “I think it’s time we wash our hands of this icky business, and barge our way bravely onward toward the FUTURE!”
“Stupid…”
“HOMEWARD!”

Wendy gripped her fingers around the upper rim of the airlock, and hoisted herself out before extending a hand down to help him up.
As she set him down beside her, he glanced around the top of the ship’s hull. He noticed a large jagged hole that had been broken in the glass paneling. Beneath, the metal framework and engine components were scarred and dented; the unmistakable wounds of grinding saws.
“Woah…” Dipper blinked, as he approached the damage. “You, uh… You must’ve been right about the lion staying attached…”
“…Yeah, ‘course I was right.” Wendy grunted. “I’m… Like… Always right. And stuff.”
Dipper reached into the hole and touched one of the dented pipes inside. He almost burned his hand. “OW! Augh. Wow, that could’ve been bad… Hey, how did you know anyway?”
“Oh…” Wendy shrugged. “Like… Uh… Uh… Like, I guess one side of the ship kinda felt a little heavy… And I think I heard it moving around out there, so yeah… Anyway, let’s go dude. Before it… I dunno, I guess it’s not gonna explode, but still.”
“Yeah…”
They slid down the side of the curved hull, dropped off the rim into the grass, limped across the yard to the side porch, and plopped down on the sofa.
They sat in an easy sort of silence for a few minutes, occasionally groaning or muttering or massaging their aching limbs.
Wendy began to unbluckle and loosen her armor. Piece after piece she removed, and tossed them all on the porch beside her. As the bulky clutter came off, she flexed her limbs and stared at herself in quiet amazement. She’d felt like she’d been sick for days now. The radiation poisoning from the crash had nearly destroyed her immune system, and she’d spent every moment since: the exploration, the imprisonment, the escape, the fight, feeling weak and small and impotent. Like half the woman she ought to be. But now, as the armor came off, she realized that it really was all gone. None of it had ever happened. Aside from the injuries and the stresses of today alone… She was strong again. She was herself again. Hesitantly, she lifted up her shirt to inspect her belly, and saw that the stab wound was gone, without a scar or a memory. They’d undone it. They really had undone it…
She looked back at Dipper. He was having quite a difficult time getting the shoulder pads up past his head, having forgotten that he needed to loosen the straps first. After a couple seconds of struggling with the plastic plates up around his chin, he let it back down, fumbled momentarily with the buckles, and tried again. It worked the second time. He tossed the pads down next to Wendy’s, then took a moment to straighten his hair down over his birthmark, and subtly readjusted his jeans for some private reason. He saw she had her shirt lifted up, and quickly looked away.
He was trying ever-so-slightly too hard not to look like a dork. And failing, naturally.
Just like normal.
As she put her shirt down, she suddenly stifled a laugh. “You’re a lot of trouble, you know that?”
“Huh?”
“Oh, uh… Oh, nothing.”
“Oh.” Dipper fiddled his thumbs in his lap, and wondered for a second why things were suddenly so awkward. For most of this week, things had been surprisingly non-awkward… When was the easy banter supposed to start up again? Whatever happened to that? “Uh…” He decided he may as well speak up. “Yeah, that was pretty crazy, huh?” He nodded back at the ship.
“That’s the third time you’ve said that exact same sentence in as many minutes.” Wendy gave a small smile.
“Oh… Really… Oops. Yeah. Well. Uh.”
“Yeah…” She chuckled. “That really was something else…” She seemed as eager as he was to talk again, but she had no idea what to say either.
“Maybe if we do that again…” Dipper thought out loud. “I’ll drive.”
“You…” She blinked, and slowly realized that he was joking. “Aww… Oh, c’mon man, don’t gimme that.” She smirked at him. “That was fun… I mean… I mean hey, when’s the last time you saw somebody bust out moves like that with a spaceship, huh?”
A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “…You drive spaceships about as well as you drive cars.”
“Yeah, well…” She laughed again as she struggled to think of a retort. Indeed, she was struggling just to remember today. Struggling to remember the whole fateful flight: those events which had transpired objective moments ago, but which felt to her like a foggy, distant dream, overshadowed by all the terribleness since… “Well…” Slowly, as she searched her brain for happier thoughts, the details began to come back to her. “Well, you read Alien-ese about as well as you read Spanish.” She prodded. “‘That’s the reactor ignition’ you said. ‘push that button’ you said. ‘try those switches over there’ you said… But it wasn’t any of those, was it?”
“No… No, we made it out by dumb luck…” Dipper admitted.
“Yeah…” Wendy closed her eyes and remembered the first part of today. Remembered it better now, and fondly.
“Ugh… Sorry.” Dipper sighed.
She blinked. “Yeah… Hey, you know what, I’m sorry too, ha ha… I think I only noticed that one last lion at the last second. Almost blew us up… I bet… I guess I am a pretty bad pilot all-in-all…”
“Ahh… It’s fine…” Dipper grabbed the collar of his shirt, and turned it towards her to show the stain. “It’s just barf. It washes out.”
“Ha ha… Ooooh… That’s gross dude.” She yarded one of her boots off, and threw it at him. It was quite sweaty on the inside, and he instinctively recoiled from the reek even as he caught it.
“Augh! Wow, you’re gross!” He threw the it back at her.
“No you.” She threw it back.
“No you...”
Sometime during all this, a gothic, edgy purple van came rolling up the drive.
“Uh oh.” Wendy frowned, and missed catching the boot. It hit her in the face.
“What?” He followed her gaze.
“Robbie.”
“Uh oh.”
“Umm… Let me do the talking.”
“Right.”
As soon as the van’s driver noticed the UFO (which was taking up about 5 parking spaces, one of which he’d been aiming for) the van’s brakes squealed and it slid to a stop, its wheels kicking up little clouds of dust.
The driver-side door opened, and Robbie peaked out, frowning at the spaceship.
With a sigh, Wendy made to stand up. “LOOK DUDE…” She announced in his direction.
Robbie looked at her, and in an instant ducked back into his van. “NEVER MIND ALL THAT!” He recited.
“Huh?” Wendy frowned.
“Wait, what?” Dipper leaned past her.
“I don’t want any more of this!” He announced. “So NEVER MIND ALL THAT! I swear I didn’t see anything! Aliens aren’t real! Monsters aren’t real, spaceships aren’t real and time travel ain’t real and that thing right there is just swamp gas! Just leave me the heck out of this, and don’t brain wipe me!”
“Brain wipe?”
“Swamp gas?”
His head turned away from the window. “Alright, I gotta go! Tambry needs me!” He commanded. “Get out of my van, Girl-Dipper! Ride’s over!”
The passenger door opened and closed, and the van spun around and sped off down the road.
“IF YOU CAN’T TAKE THE HEAT STAY OUT OF THE KITCHEN!” Dipper cupped his hands and yelled after him.
“YEAH, YOU HAVE FUN IN BORING TOWN, DUDE!” Wendy added.
“NEVER MIND ALL THAT!” Robbie’s voice carried over the wind as he disappeared into the distance.
The dust cloud settled, revealing Mabel and Waddles standing there blinking.
“Hey there Mabel.” Dipper waved. “Where’ve you guys been all day?”
“D-DIPPER!” Mabel squealed, and began to run toward them.
He didn’t expect her to cross the entire yard quite as fast as she did, and so didn’t raise his hands to shield himself until she’d already tackled him off his feet, and they’d landed in a pile and rolled off the porch into the grass. “YOU’RE OKAY YOU’RE OKAY I’M SO GLAD TO SEE YOU!” Mabel screeched.
“AUGH! OW! HEY! Yes! I’m okay! Yes, we’re both okay! What the heck are you freaking out about?”
“Uh…” Mabel glanced at Wendy, who made a sign of subtly zipping her lips. “Uh, nothing, actually!” Mabel shrugged, released Dipper from the embrace, and helped him back to his feet. “So hey! Wow! You escaped from the Forest of Daggers! That’s cool!” She nodded. “And you’re home really fast! How’d you do it?”
“Umm…” Dipper frowned. “You did see the big spaceship that’s literally sitting right there, didn’t you?”
“Oh yeeeeeeah.” Mabel turned and looked at it. “Thaaaat. Wait, so it actually flies?!?”
“How the heck would it have gotten here if-”
“So not only you survived, but it survived too!” Mabel realized outloud. “We actually have a real live UFO to play with now!”
“No!” Dipper put his hands on his hips. “Okay, first of all, it’s not a toy, it’s a vehiclee! A tool! And a fairly dangerous tool, so that makes it about the exact opposite of a plaything. And secondly, it’s not a UFO. ’UFO’ stands for ‘Unidentified Flying Object.’ Whereas that machine is a nuclear-powered sub-light cargo shuttle manufactured on Trilazzxx Beta, as exploratory equipment for Colonial Vessel 46.18’\. That is, a perfectly well identified extraterrestrial spacecraft.”
“OH MY GEEEEEEEE…! Literally everything is going exactly incredibly perfectly! This is the very best day ever then! What are you guys doing out here?!? We’ve got to tell everyone we have a UFO to play with!” Mabel grabbed Dipper’s wrist and more-or less drug him inside the Shack.
“Hey, where you going with him?” Wendy raised a fist tiredly. “We weren’t done talking and stuff!”
“Soos! Melody! Grunkle Stan! Great Uncle Ford!” Mabel yelled at the top of her lungs. “You guys have to get out here! Throw a party! Load the confetti! Prepare the fattened calf! Dipper and Wendy got back safe! Everyone’s okay! AND BOY do they have a story! There’s aliens and aliens spaceships and all kinds of amazing things that happened! Tell them, Dipper! Tell them how we WON!”
“DUDE!” Soos set down his plunger, and raised his eyepatch. “For real, girl-bro?”
“What’s going on?” Melody called from gift shop.
“Hey, quiet down, some of us are trying to sleep!” Stan opened one eye and growled from the recliner.
“It’s 3 in the afternoon, Stan!” Ford stepped out of his lab, and gave Stan’s recliner a kick as he walked past. “Look alive, this sounds important!”
The whole group filed out the front door and out into the parking lot, where they stood around the spaceship, oohing and ahhing and poking and prodding and riddling Dipper with all manner of questions.
Wendy found herself all alone on the porch, watching the procession in her periphery, feeling quite detached indeed, like an alien herself. So she eased herself back down deeper into the couch, and put her legs up on one of the trash cans. “Yeah. If anybody wants me.” She muttered, as she pulled her hat down over her eyes. “I’ll be right here.”

There was a LOT of hubbub for the next hour and a half. Soos and Mabel insisted on playing in and around the ship, Stan put up signs to keep tourists away, Melody made everyone big, spicy victory omelets, and Ford called up McGucket to have him come over and give the thing a professional inspection.
Plans were made.
Dipper told them about the ghosts they’d found, and about the origins of the forest, and about the idea to destroy the entire thing using a tractor beam from the main ship. Everybody agreed that this was an excellent idea, and decided to go down there tomorrow to set it up.
As expected, Mabel didn’t like that plan so much. So she paid more attention to what they heard from McGucket: From his inspection of the shuttle, he’d determined that it was actually in a surprisingly good condition. A few repairs to the pressure seals, some patches to the damaged reactor, a refill of its coolant, and a cleaning of its crusty outer hull, and it might be able to fly about almost like new. Maybe even make it into space…
An idea began to brew, way, way back in the thinky parts of Mabel’s head. And she was pretty sure that this idea, unlike her regular ideas, was actually a good one…
Throughout the whole thing, Dipper found himself quite uncomfortably at the center of attention. Everybody seemed to want to give him a hug or a handshake, and hear from him what all had happened, and when, and where, and how the devil he’d done it. Ford was proud of him, Stan was proud of him, Soos just wanted to hear about those swag robot dudes… And for some reason, Mabel never stopped singing his praise. It was as if to her, any one of today’s discoveries or adventures was less important than Dipper simply being here, and being the hero.
It was enough to induce a mild headache.
He couldn’t make her hear sense, he couldn’t get out of the spotlight, he couldn’t even quite adequately communicate how little credit he deserved for what happened today; after all, Wendy was the one who did most of the heavy lifting, Wendy was the one who flew the ship, and Wendy saved his life more times than he could count.
But Mabel was too excited, and everyone had too many questions and thoughts and congratulations, and nobody wanted to leave the ship (and the victory omelets) to walk across the entire yard to talk to the reclining redhead.
But he wanted to. Frequently through it all, his eyes kept straying back to the porch, just to make sure she was still there. A quiet, doubting voice kept whispering in his ear, threatening all the terrible things that might happen. Maybe she’ll get bored over there. Maybe she’ll go home. Maybe she’s jealous that everyone’s ignoring her. Maybe she’s angry because Mabel’s giving me all the glory. Maybe she remembers why I want to talk to her, and doesn’t want to talk about it. Maybe she’s like Robbie: maybe she’s had enough of this adventuring business for one lifetime, and wants to just go home. Maybe by now, all she wants to do is obey her dad, and go get a good job somewhere far away.
Maybe, if he didn’t keep looking over at her, he’d miss her leaving.
It was almost an hour until he could slip away, and to do it, he had to convince Soos that the ship could be turned on by speaking the magic word. While everybody tried to help him guess it, Dipper ducked out and hurried back toward the Shack.
He dashed into the gift shop, glanced around briefly to make sure Stan wasn’t watching, then grabbed a pair of ice cream sandwiches from the cooler. He almost sprinted through the kitchen to the back door, and came through so fast that he almost tripped over her own shoes.
And Wendy was still there.
And she was fast asleep.
He stood there watching for a minute, with an ice cream in both hands, feeling like an idiot. Finally he set one down on the couch beside her, then sat himself down on the other side of the couch. It felt wrong to eat his before she ate hers, and it also felt wrong to wake her to eat hers, and equally wrong to just put both of them back.
So he just watched her sleep.
Something in the back of his mind was screaming at him, telling him that something wasn’t right, that he should do something, and that she wasn’t okay; he couldn’t understand what it was, but the feeling was strong. Finally, as if she could hear his thoughts, she suddenly moved. Her body spasmed and she sat upright with a gasp. Her eyes were wide and wild, and they darted around the porch frantically, until they finally settled on Dipper. He frowned at her in confusion as she slowly calmed back down. “Oh…” She sighed, and blinked slowly. “Oh… H-hey. Hey dude.”
“Uh… Hi Wendy. Uh… Hi. Yeah. Good to see you.”
“Yeah… How long was I out…?”
“Uh… An hour or so? I dunno.”
“Man…” She rubbed her face through her hands. “Is an hour enough time to have nightmares?”
“Is that what happened?”
“Yeah… I just… Ah, never mind, I’m sorry man, I’m just… Just really tired.” She leaned back again, and collapsed on the cushions. “Just really… Really… Tired.”
“…Sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say.
She made a great show of trying to lift one arm, only to have it fall back down. “Yep. Too tired. Wendy’s paralyzed from the neck down. Stop the presses, it’s for real this time.”
“Ha ha… Oh… Well, I got you ice cream.”
She noticed the treat sitting next to her hand, and blinked slowly. “…Ice cream…”
“Yeah… I mean, if you’re too tired for ice cream, then I guess I can put it back or…”
“HMM Ice Cream…” She snatched it up and began to unwrap it.
“Oh.”
“Did you pay for this?”
“No.”
“Swag.” She took a bite. “What Stan don’t know won’t hurt us, right?”
“Ha ha! Yeah…” He finally opened his and began to eat it, and everything was silent again. It was an awkward silence. Felt like something should be said, but there wasn’t really anything to say. He scratched nervously at one of his robo-bug bites, and ate his ice cream too slowly to keep it from dripping.
“Hey, uh… Are you okay?” He finally asked.
“Uh?” She blinked at him.
“Like… I mean, sorry, it’s just that, with the nightmare and the being tired and the… The thing in the middle of all the flight where you just… Let go of the controls and went all quiet. What was that? Did something happen? I mean… I mean, are you okay? Everything good?”
“Oh yeah…” Wendy shrugged. “Yeah, I’m good. Everything’s good.”
“Okay… I just thought it might be a seizure, or some kind of heart attack, or… Like, one of those things where it turns out your friend has this debilitating disease and she’s gonna die or something…”
“…Dude… Chill…”
“Okay.”
Her eyes drifted down to her ice cream. “You know.” She said.
“What?”
“Ice cream… For some reason I thought there’d be ice cream. After everything ended, after everything was okay, once we finally had a chance to sit down… I dreamed that you and I would sit down together, right here, and eat this ice cream… It’s just… Just the picture I had.” She took another bite. “…It could’ve turned out worse. A jillion things could’ve gone different. Things could have exploded or been destroyed or burned or irradiated, good people could’ve been hurt, or… But instead we’re eating ice cream. Like the dream wasn’t a dream. Like it was… Something else. Like a vision of how it ought to be, and the way it really is… I dunno.”
Dipper nodded slowly with a confused frown, pretending to understand, then giving up. “…You lost me.” He said.
“I know…” Wendy sighed. “…Don’t worry about it… I’m just glad that… I mean I’m just glad.” She let her gaze wander out across the valley, as the warm, bright sun slowly drooped toward the cliffs, bringing the afternoon to a peaceful close. “I’m just glad.”
“Oh.”
They sat for a few minutes more in silence. This time it was better. It felt like an easy silence.
Wendy slowly stretched, and a breath of air slowly escaped through her nose. Dipper watched a single melty drop of ice cream fell from her hand to her jeans as she yawned, then felt like yawning himself. He leaned back against the cushions.
He felt happy. And he could feel that she was too.
Dipper took a deep breath.
Wendy took a deep breath.
“So…” He began.
“So…” She began at the exact same time. This seemed to cause some form of mutual interruption, forcing them to both stop talking.
“Go ahead.”
“No, you go ahead.”
“Okay…” She continued. “So… So, if I remember right… We started a conversation earlier that we never got to finish.”
“Oh…” Dipper stammered. “Oh yeah. Uh… We did, huh? Yeah…” He took a bite of his ice cream.
“About how this adventure might very well be our last.” Wendy continued. “About how if we’re not careful, we might never hang out again. About how I’ll miss you and you’ll miss me and neither of us really want that to happen and, like, what should we do about that…?”
“Uh… Uh… Yeah…” He ate his ice cream slightly too fast and got brain freeze. He made a mental note to bring it down a notch.
“Hmm.” Wendy grunted.
Finally Dipper was staring down at the finished popsicle stick, wiping the last little bits of strawberry gunk off his face. His ice cream was gone, and with it had gone his one excuse to not speak. He opened his mouth. Then he closed it, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Wendy, uh… I was wondering if tomorrow… Uh… If… Uh…”
“What?”
He looked at her.
She sure was pretty.
“Uh…” A spell of itchiness seized him about that time, and it got just a little too much to bear. “Uh… Hmm.”
“What?” She repeated.
“…Never mind.”
“No no no no!” She insisted, and overcame her tiredness enough to sit up straighter. “We started a conversation earlier, and now we better finish it. And you just started a sentence just now, so you darn better finish that too. If you really do have something you want to say, you darn better man up and speak up, or who knows; one of us could die in the meantime. You never know when you'll never have another chance, so take it now. SPEAK man.”
“UH!” He squirmed nervously. “No, it’s not… Wait, do you know what I’m going to say?”
“I know I didn’t come all this way just to listen to you stutter.”
Dipper thought that was a weird thing to say, but he could tell she meant well. And for the first time, it dawned on him that she might actually want it. “Uh…” He stuttered one last time, then set his jaw, and finally said. “Okay.” Then he looked her in the eye and, with a truly monumental effort of courage, opened his mouth and said. “Wendy… Do you want to go on a date with me tomorrow?”

She finished off her ice cream, and flicked the popsicle stick into the bushes. A smile might have twitched at the corner of her mouth. Then it stopped twitching, and spread across her whole face. “You know dude.” She beamed. “I gotta be perfectly straight with ya… For a while there, I honestly thought you’d never ask.”