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minijenn · 6 years

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Universe Falls, Chapter 50, Part 1

AHAHAHAHAH ITS HAPPENING! THE END OF ARC 5 IS AT LAST UPON IS AND IT KICKS OFF WITH A FUCKING BANG! For reals I’m very pleased with how this chapter turned out so hopefully you all enjoy it too! And so without any further ado, here you go! :D

Previous: http://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/171070315639/universe-falls-chapter-49

Chapter 50, Part 1: Not What He Seems

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In the very early hours just past midnight, the bulk of the residents of Gravity Falls were tucked in their beds, fast asleep as they should have been. The town was quiet, the summer night warm and starry as both the natural and the supernatural got their night’s rest. However, there was no such rest for the conman hard at work in the basement tucked away underneath the Mystery Shack, especially since he was so incredibly close to achieving exactly what he was working so hard for.

“Come on, come on…” Stan muttered as he watched the machine’s nearby energy tanks fill up with the hazardous liquid he had just acquired. “That should be just enough to finish the job,” he said with a nod of satisfaction, briefly removing his fez to wipe the sweat from his brow only to wipe a bit of toxic waste across his forehead in the process. “Whew! Can’t be too careful with this stuff.”

The conman’s attention was quickly diverted by a flash of vibrant light from the machine itself, followed by the telltale buzz of the countdown timer right above his head. Its screen blared read with the messages ‘event initialized’ before switching to a countdown of 18 hours. Stan couldn’t help but grin proudly upon seeing this, knowing that after years of waiting and working towards what had always seemed like an impossible dream, the end was finally in sight.

Of course, as close as he was to that end, Stan still took the time to once again briefly glance over what the first journal had to say about the machine’s operation. “Warning,” he began, though he quickly grew bored of the book’s wordy advisory. “Blah, blah, blah, ‘extreme usage could result in minor gravity anomalies.’ Aw, can it, poindexter!” He slammed the journal shut in aggravation. “I’ve come this far, I’m not giving up now!” And he meant exactly that. Not only had he been working tirelessly on this project for 30 years now, but he had done so in complete and total secrecy all that time. He had dutifully kept this momentous machine hidden, his life’s work unbeknownst to everyone: to the town, to the Crystal Gems, to even his own niece and nephew innocently sleeping upstairs. Still, the conman knew that secrecy was set to end roughly around the same time the countdown above him did, something he admittedly didn’t feel fully prepared for, especially when it came to his nibblings. There would be no avoiding telling them the truth, Stan knew, but at least he still had a few hours left to mentally prepare himself before he finally told them everything. Everything that he had hidden and everything he had hoped for, all at once.

But he had no time to plan his strategy on that front now; now was the time to set it all in motion once and for all. With the push of a button, the machine roared to life, sparking with its usual blue, vibrant, clarion glow that completely illuminated the darkened basement. “Yes!” Stan cheered excitedly, remembering that same kind of glow well from 30 years ago, though back then it had been under much different circumstances. “This is it!”

Amidst his growing elation, the conman hardly noticed the journal’s warnings start to come true as his fez slowly began to lift a bit off his own head on his own accord. Likewise just outside the shack, a few stray rocks and pebbles gradually came to levitate, Gompers the goat raising up a few inches off the ground right along with them. But the effects of these gravity anomalies were hardly limited to just the Mystery Shack. Up at the Crystal Temple, the patio furniture lightly hovered, and inside, with Steven, still totally asleep, rising a bit off his bed on the loft as Lion did the same off the couch below. In town itself, several cars were gently removed from the ground, sidewalk benches and unattended bicycles experiencing the same phenomenon. The anomalies spread even as the junkyard, where McGucket snoozed with his racoon wife, unaware that the repaired laptop was flashing red with an ‘active’ warning as it lifted off his desk. Back at the shack itself, even Dipper and Mabel remained fast asleep, unaware of the fact that they were lightly lifting off their own beds, unaware of the unearthly blue glow bleeding up to the attic through the floorboards, unaware of just how many things were about to change in the next 18 hours alone.

And, just as soon as gravity began to disappear from the unsuspecting town, it all came rushing right back.

Stan barely even heard the resounding thunk that echoed around the shack as everything landed back in their proper places. Instead, his sights were focused solely on the machine, solely on the dream that was so close, so very, very close to finally becoming a reality. “It’s gonna be a bumpy ride, but it’ll all be worth it,” he assured himself, firmly believing that as he synchronized his watch to match up to the countdown timer. The conman took in a deep, resolved breath as he shut the other journal he had in his possession, knowing that soon enough, he’d have no need for them at all. “Just eighteen more hours. Finally, everything changes, today.”

An early morning for Mabel almost always meant an early morning for Dipper, whether he liked it or not, and this morning was no exception. As she cheerfully rushed down the hall, he tiredly followed after her, hardly paying his sister’s energized excitement much mind.

“Ah! Here it is!” Mabel exclaimed brightly as they arrived at one of the shack’s less-opened doors. “Ok, so I was opening random doors—because I’m a creep—when I found something amazing!”

“If it was worth waking up at 7 AM for, then it really will be amazing,” Dipper deadpanned, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“Oh, trust me, bro-bro, it will be,” Mabel assured as she began to open the door. “Feast your eyes!” she boldly proclaimed, motioning to the box loaded with all manner of fireworks and pyrotechnics resting on the closet floor.

“Whoa! No way!” Dipper exclaimed, now just as equally impressed and invested.

“Bro. Bro,” Mabel began, slinging an arm around her brother’s shoulder. “We’re both thinking it-”

“Crazy rooftop fireworks party!” both twins cheered daringly, though their plans were seemingly ruined as Stan happened to overhear them.

“Not so fast, kids!” he exclaimed, sending the startled pair a staunch glare. “There is no way on earth you’re setting off those dangerous, illegal fireworks…” Upon trailing off, the conman broke into a wide, mischievous grin as he placed hands on each of his nibblings’ shoulders. “Without me!”

The twins shared an excited gasp at this, one that Stan merely chuckled in warm amusement over as he pulled the fireworks stash out of the closet and led the way outside. The family decided to take to the roof platform, dragging both the fireworks as well as a cooler filled with ice cream up with them before the intentional explosions began. While Stan mostly hung back and let Dipper and Mabel have their fun with the fireworks, he was more than happy to help them out by lighting their fuses up so they could freely set them off.

“Here ya go, sweetie,” the conman grinned as he used a sparkler to ignite the skyrocket Mabel was holding. “Set something on fire for your Grunkle Stan.”

“I am the god of destruction!” Mabel shouted at the top of her lungs, wildly shooting the firework off into the sky without any restraint at all.

No sooner had the burst of fiery color exploded in the morning sky then Steven and the Gems arrived from the temple, all of them curious as to what all of the noise and excitement was about.

“Heyooo, Pines fam!” Amethyst greeted casually as she rolled up to the shack alongside her teammates. “What’s happenin’?”

“Are you guys having a crazy rooftop fireworks party?” Steven asked with intrigued stars in his eyes. “Can we join in too?”

“Eh, sure,” Stan shrugged with an amicable smirk. “Pretty sure we’ve got enough of these babies to go around. Ya know, as long as we don’t end up blowing up the entire box at once somehow.”

“Now, hold on a minute,” Pearl cut in, hands on her hips as she sent the conman a disapproving frown. “Stan, are you sure you should be letting children play around with such dangerous explosives?”

“Uh, I dunno,” the conman retorted, his tone slightly teasing. “Are you sure you should be totally lame, Pearl?”

As the white Gem let out an appalled scoff at this, both Stan and Amethyst burst out laughing, the kids all quickly joining in. Even Garnet got a good chuckle out of this as she placed a hand on her disgruntled teammate’s shoulder. “He’s got a bit of a point,” she remarked wryly, which ended up being enough to get break Pearl’s stoicism and elicit a small laugh from her as well.

From there, it didn’t take long for the Gems to get in on the fun. Everyone hopped up on the roof, shooting off what was left of the fireworks and cracking jokes among each other all the while. Steven leapt right into waving around sparklers and eating ice pops with Dipper and Mabel while Garnet was able to use just her fingertips to give a spark to most of the fireworks Stan, Amethyst, and even, despite some initial hesitance, Pearl were blasting off to the sky. In the colorful radiance put off by the explosions, no one was able to deny that they were enjoying their early morning party immensely, even if it was somewhat destructive. For by the time the fireworks had all run out, small, controlled fires had broken out across the perimeter of the shack, though fortunately none of them were too serious.

“Woo!” Mabel cheered as she finished sending the last firework flying. “This whole place is on fire!”

“Literally,” Dipper noted, glancing down at the flames dotting the shack below them.

“Well, I suppose that’s the risk you run when you set off literal explosives this close to a wooden structure,” Pearl said with something of a bemused grin.

“Eh, this is far from the worst this whole shack has seen this summer alone,” Stan remarked, taking a swig of his cola. “But seriously though, we should probably clean this mess up.”

“Oh! I have an idea!” Steven chimed in. “We can use water balloons to put all these fires out!”

“…I don’t see why not,” the conman shrugged, with the twins and Amethyst eagerly getting on board with this idea.

In no time at all, thanks to Garnet, a whole bucket of water balloons had been filled up, and the purple Gem and the kids were all more than happy to partake. Stan, Garnet, and Pearl hung by on the porch, watching in apt amusement as the kids ran about, pelting each other with water balloons and laughing all the while as they tried to dodge Amethyst’s direct onslaught with the garden hose.

“Honestly, Amethyst, isn’t using the hose cheating?” Pearl asked as the purple Gem laughingly sprayed both Steven and Dipper down, easily blocking off the water balloon Mabel tossed her way before doing the same to her.

“Honestly, Pearl,” Amethyst mocked playfully. “Isn’t sitting on the sidelines like that boring?” At this, the purple Gem turned the hose on her teammate, effectively soaking her and eliciting plentiful laughter from everyone else.

“Ha! Nice one, Amethyst!” Stan exclaimed, readily chuckling at the white Gem’s unserious frustration.

“Ya think so?” Amethyst asked with a mischievous smirk. “Cause I this one will be even better!”

“Hey!” the conman exclaimed, unable to hold back another laugh as the purple Gem sprayed him down as well. “Alright, now you’ve done it! I’m gonna… eh forget it,” Stan shrugged. “You’re just lucky I’m too lazy to get up outta this chair.”

“Well I’m certainly not!” Pearl huffed, standing as she grabbed an armful of water balloons as Amethyst hurried off. “Amethyst! Get back here! It’s payback time!”

“Hey, Pearl! Wait up!” Steven called after the white Gem as him, Dipper, and Mabel readily followed after her.

“Yeah! We wanna get some payback too!” Mabel proclaimed with a wild war cry, already launching a water balloon in Amethyst’s direction.

“Ah, this is what Saturdays are for,” Stan remarked contentedly as he reclined into his seat. “Doing dumb things forever.”

“Dumb things forever!” all three of the kids echoed in a triumphant shout as they jumped into a pile of left over water balloons together. Somewhere behind them, Pearl was still in hot pursuit after Amethyst, tossing balloons at her while the purple Gem occasionally aimed her hose back at her teammate, both of them laughing all the while.

“This is the life, ain’t it, shades?” Stan asked Garnet as she leaned against the nearby porch post.

“I’d say it is,” the Gem leader replied with a small smile. She paused for a moment, said smile disappearing before it returned a bit more genuine than before. “Actually, Stan, I’ve been meaning to offer you an apology, one that’s not just from me, but from Amethyst and Pearl too.”

“Uh… for what?”

“Before this summer began, we had all seemed to live under the unspoken rule that we’d avoid each other whenever possible,” Garnet began to explain. “And when our paths did cross, we usually only met each other with hostility and suspicion. But then…” She looked out towards the kids, who were engrossed in their own miniature water balloon battle. “Steven met Dipper and Mabel, and the close friendship they have now sparked almost immediately after they did. And in a sense… they were the ones who brought all of us together, who helped us realize that there’s more to you than we thought, Stan.”

“O-oh really?” the conman asked, glancing away in slight nervousness upon hearing all this.

“Really,” Garnet confirmed, placing a friendly hand on his shoulder. “And so we’re sorry for however unfairly we might have treated you in the past. But its good to know that we can all finally get along. For the kids’ sakes.”

“Uh… y-yeah,” Stan took in an anxious breath. Normally, he would have been somewhat surprised, even grateful even, to hear such warm sentiments from any of the Crystal Gems really. But in light of the massive secret he had been keeping from them for years now, a secret that was very close to being brought to light, he couldn’t help but feel rather uncomfortable, to the point of near guilt, as he weakly returned the Gem leader’s smile. “F-for… for the kids.”

“Hey, Mr. Pines!” Steven exclaimed as him and the twins ran forward, all three of them equally cheerful despite being soaking wet. “We just wanted to say thanks for all the water balloons and popsicles and fireworks! This has been so much fun!”

“It sure has!” Mabel readily agreed, holding her popsicle up in a “toast” of sorts. “To Grunkle Stan! Not just a great uncle-”

“The greatest uncle!” Dipper finished as they all playfully tossed a round of water balloons at the conman as he put forth a weak effort to shield himself from them.

“Alright, alright,” Stan chuckled as both him and Garnet got the watery brunt of the kids’ attack. “I tell ya,” he said to his nibblings in particular. “It’s unnatural for siblings to get along as well as you two do. Heck, its honestly crazy just how great all three of you get on with each other even though this whole little ‘group’ of yours only started this summer.”

“Well, they don’t call us the Mystery Kids for nothing!” Steven exclaimed with a warm smile.

“Ha! Yeah!” Mabel grinned, pulling both boys in for a sudden hug from their spot on the ground. “And don’t worry! We’ve still got plenty of summer left to drive each other crazy!”

“Ugh, Mabel!” Dipper groaned as Mabel pulled on him a bit too tightly, prompting him to push her away and resulting in another water balloon falling on both her and Steven.

“Heh, yeah…” Stan said with something of an anxious laugh. “Plenty of summer left…” He paused briefly, glancing towards his nibblings in particular as he realized that he needed to stop beating around the bush. He had clearly already warmed them up enough by giving them this morning of blissful fun. He could only keep it going for so long before the truth came bursting through, which meant that it would be for the best if he was the one to reveal it instead, on his own terms. “Uh… kids? There’s something I, um, s-something I should tell you. It’s, um… well i-its complicated… I-” The conman hesitated as he looked back to the trio of curious kids before him, noticing that they weren’t the only ones listening. Amethyst and Pearl had just happened to finish their ongoing chase as they happened to overhear Stan, and of course, Garnet was still standing right next to him. And just like that, his own terms had turned into everyone else’s terms instead. “…I-I gotta go refresh my soda!” he quickly improvised, throwing on a casual-enough smile. “B-be right back!”

At this, the conman quickly stood and walked over to the far side of the shack, away from the scrutiny of both the kids and the Gems. He let out the breath he had been holding in for some time now, briefly glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one had followed him. “Enjoy it while you can, Stan,” he muttered to himself, glancing over at his own reflection in the window nearby. “They’ll all find out sooner or later. After all, today’s the day…”

And indeed it was. For in just a few hours, just about everything would change in ways no one could really expect, Stan included. But how could he just say that to everyone, right out of the blue? How could he tell the Gems about the real reason behind his longstanding conflict with them, just when they were all finally starting to get along? Or even beyond that, how could he possibly even begin to describe any of it to his nibblings? To the two kids who looked up to him, who believed in him, even when he didn’t always believe in himself? Who had managed to work their way so deeply into his heart that he would do anything, anything for them? Who he was constantly putting in danger by simply working on the massive, potentially catastrophic machine that had been resting just under their feet the entire summer?

In truth, Stan hadn’t the faintest clue about how he was even going to start to explain any of his age-old secrets to anyone, Gems and kids included. But when it came right down to it, it would turn out he wouldn’t even have to. Because everything was about to be revealed in the very last way he had wanted them to.

Stan was broken out of his ongoing musings as he happened to glance up and notice what looked to be a strange red dot resting on his fez. “Huh? What is that, a ladybug?” he frowned, reaching up a hand to slap it away only for it to remain where it was. In fact, several of more dots appeared in quick succession, all of them aimed directly at the confused conman. “What the—oh no!” Stan barely even had time to let out a gasp before he was abruptly tackled by a formerly-hidden man in black.

Countless more similarly-dressed man, or agents, rather were quick to follow the first out of their hiding spots in the nearby woods. “Target secure!” one of the leaders of the invading bunch shouted over his walkie-talkie. “Take the house!”

The agents did just that, still pouring out of the forest as they rushed forward to form a perimeter around the Mystery Shack. Somewhere overhead, a helicopter buzzed overhead, several more agents repelling down from it and bursting into the shack itself through windows and doors. Several teams filled into almost every room of the house, from the gift shop, to the den, to even the attic were Waddles had been napping peacefully. “Pig secure!” one of the agents called through the intercom upon embracing the unwitting pig tightly. “We have secured a pig!”

Outside, things were still in absolute chaos, the ground agents rushing to surround the quite startled group of kids and Gems in the front yard. Steven, Dipper, and Mabel all bunched up close together, the Gems standing over them protectively as they took up an offensive stance, ready to summon their weapons at a moment’s notice if they needed to protect the kids. “Kids and aliens are secure!” another agent called to his superior as he cocked his weapon as a precaution.

“A-aliens!?” Pearl huffed, offended by this derogatory title.

“Technically, we are aliens,” Garnet corrected, though all the same, she was rather baffled as to how she hadn’t seen this strike coming through her future vision. Really, she hadn’t been getting any clear, concise visions all day, which, considering how peaceful things had been thus far, she hadn’t really put much thought into. But now, with the peace abruptly shattered and replaced by an all-out government raid, the Gem leader was immediately thrown off by her foresight not properly working for some unknown reason, especially at an integral moment such as this.

“Don’t move!” one of the agents shouted at the Gems in particular, the entire legion circling them keeping their weapons trained on the trio. “Or else!”

“Or else what?” Amethyst brazenly challenged, ready to draw her whip. “You’re gonna shoot us with those dinky little water guns of yours? Pffft, as if!”

The agent in question was quickly provoked to action at this as he aimed his weapon at the purple Gem and opened fire. The gun’s stunning blast was quickly deflected by Steven, however, as he summoned his shield and jumped in front of Amethyst at just the right time. “Whoa! Hold on!” the young Gem exclaimed, just as alarmed by this dramatic turn of events as Dipper and Mabel were. “I-I don’t know what’s going on here, but can’t we all just talk this out without shooting each other with lasers?”

“Whoa, the chief wasn’t kidding,” one of the other agents whispered to his nearby teammate. “The kid really is one of them too!”

“One of them?” Steven frowned in apt confusion, though he never received an answer.

“But what about those other two?” the other agent nodded towards the equally bewildered twins.

“Nah, they’re normal, I think. Pretty sure they’re related to the old man.”

“Old man?” Dipper asked, exchanging a worried glance with Mabel as they quickly figured out who that was. “Wait! Grunkle Stan?!”

“Ugh! Hey! Hands off, you stooge!” the aforementioned conman shouted as he was dragged up to the front of the shack, securely handcuffed. The pair of agents roughly pulled Stan up to one of the countless government vehicles surrounding the shack, pressing him firmly against it as they patted him down for any hidden weapons. “I-I don’t understand! What did I do that warrants this much arresting?!”

None of the lower level agents bothered to explain this as their pair of superiors stepped forward, both of them quite familiar to everyone present: Agent Powers and Agent Trigger. “The government guys?” Dipper interjected in confusion upon seeing the pair of agents alive and well again. “I thought you guys got eaten by zombies!”

“We survived,” Trigger remarked curtly. “Barely.”

“I used Trigger as a human shield,” Powers said, just as dryly as ever. “He cried like a baby.”

“What? Hey!” Trigger exclaimed in embarrassment. “Not in front of the special-ops guys!”

Wanting to get right to the point, Powers stepped up to Stan, pulling out a government tablet which was currently displaying footage of what appeared to be a person in a hazmat suit hauling away barrels of some unknown substance. “This is security footage of a government waste facility. A o’four hundred hours last night, someone robbed three hundred gallons of dangerous toxic waste.”

“What? You think that’s me?!” Stan asked, seemingly appalled by such an accusation, especially as the kids and the Gems all looked to him in surprise.

“Don’t play dumb with us, Pines,” Powers warned as he motioned for his fellow agents to take Stan away.

“But I actually am dumb!” the conman pleaded as he was shoved into the backseat of the government vehicle. “Last night I was stocking the gift shop, I swear!”

“Wait!” Mabel shouted as her and Dipper broke out of the barricade of agents to rush forward on Stan’s behalf. “You’ve got the wrong guy! Our Grunkle Stan might shoplift the occasional tangerine, but he’s not some evil super villain!”

“Listen, kids,” Powers began sternly, kneeling down to the twins’ level. “We’ve been watching your family all summer, and we’ve seen some disturbing things, but nothing as dangerous as what your uncle his hiding. Somewhere hidden in this shack is a doomsday device!”

Needless to say that neither of the twins were able to suppress a gap upon hearing such an incredible accusation, one that couldn’t possibly be true. As they glanced over at Stan himself, he gave them a look that was telling that he had no idea what the agent was talking about, one that carried a good amount of pleading for them to believe him in his innocence, which they readily did, no questions asked. After all, there was no way someone like Stan could ever be harboring anything like a doomsday device right under the Mystery Shack. Certainly, the agents had to have been mistaken somehow, in more ways than one.

“Yo! What about us?!” Amethyst asked, still scowling fiercely at the agents surrounding them. “What’s the deal with you losers holding us up if you’re only here for Stan?”

“That should be obvious,” Powers remarked evenly, glancing over at the Gems. “You so-called ‘Crystal Gems’ are being detained by order of the U.S. Government for being a highly dangerous extraterrestrial threat to planet Earth.”

“Threat?” Steven asked, exchanging a baffled glance with his guardians. “No, you guys have it all wrong! The Gems protect the Earth from all sorts of stuff, even if they are from outer space!”

“That’s right!” Pearl staunchly agreed. “All of this is complete, absolute nonsense! You have no right to ‘detain’ any of us considering the fact that all we’ve ever strived to do is keep you humans safe for centuries now!”

“Then how do you explain all this?” Powers held his tablet once again, swiping through a collection of pictures. Pictures of various Gem monster attacks, of Peridot’s robinoids, of meandering Gem mutants, and the highlight of it all: of the menacing hand ship descending upon Gravity Falls. “We have substantial proof that all of these disasters, and several more, are directly connected to the four of you, and as such, our orders are to bring you to our maximum security research facility for extensive testing and experimentation.”

“Painful experimentation,” Trigger added sharply.

“Mm… yeah, that’s not happening,” Garnet concluded, pulling her arms around all three of her teammates. “Sorry to disappoint.”

At that moment, the tables abruptly seemed to turn as Powers gave the preemptive command for the agents surrounding the Gems to surge them, only for Garnet to act before they could even think. With a tight hold on Pearl, Amethyst, and Steven, the Gem leader leapt high, temporarily blinding the nearby agents with a burst of lightning aimed for the ground. By the time things had cleared, the Crystal Gems and their young ward were all but gone, leaving not so much as even a trace behind.

“Steven!” Dipper and Mabel exclaimed in surprised unison at the daring escape they had just witnessed. Still, they were both somewhat relieved to know that the young Gem and his guardians had given the agents the slip, even though it looked as though Stan wouldn’t be so lucky.

“Ground team! Form a search party and go after those Gems now!” Powers ordered, frustrated that they had all been so easily outsmarted. “They couldn’t have gotten far. Raid their base up the hill if you have to, use of force and weapons is completely authorized! Leave no stone unturned until those aliens are found!”

A fraction of the agents immediately acted upon their chief’s orders, taking their weapons as they hurried up the hill towards the temple in search of the Gems. “In the meantime,” Powers continued, calming down somewhat as he turned to his partner. “Trigger, you take the children. I’ll talk to the old man. Sorry to break it to you, kids,” he said to the twins as he put his darkened sunglasses on. “But you don’t know your ‘neighbors’ or your uncle at all.”

By this point, both Dipper and Mabel were far too stunned by everything that was all too quickly unfurling to say much at all as Trigger motioned a pair of agents over to escort the twins to another nearby government vehicle. Stan grew quite distraught upon seeing this, knowing that the last thing he ever wanted was for his nibblings to get dragged into all of this mess. A mess that he had done everything in his power to try and avoid, but in his assurance that he wouldn’t get caught, he had gotten sloppy and careless to the point that the consequences could very well be severe if he couldn’t think of a way out of it in time. “Kids!” Stan shouted, beating against the window of the car he was in with his handcuffed wrists to catch his concerned nibblings’ attention. “You gotta believe me! For once, I’m actually innocent! Kids!” The conman left off on this final desperate plea as the vehicle drove off, taking him with it. Dipper and Mabel only had time to exchange a bewildered glance as they were also hauled away against their will, neither of them having the faintest clue as to what was really going on or what they could possibly do about any of it.

It turned out that Powers hadn’t been wrong in his assumption that the Crystal Gems hadn’t gotten far, for they had taken refuge up on one of the temple’s outstretched hands thanks to Garnet’s quick thinking. Still, it was clear they wouldn’t be able to hide out there for too long as the agents were already beginning to swarm the temple, busting into the house and raiding everything therein as they tried to beat the temple gate itself down to no avail.

“Oh, this is a disaster!” Pearl huffed, tucking back behind one of the stone hands’ fingers. “For over 150 years, we’ve operated out of Gravity Falls without being bothered by any of Earth’s governmental bodies, and now all of the sudden, here comes a bunch of agents trying to arrest us simply for being here! It’s completely absurd!”

“Ugh, this is just like what happened with those stupid society jerks!” Amethyst growled, kicking another one of the fingers petulantly. “It’s like nobody around here appreciates just how much we do for them! So what if we lure a few dumb monsters or Homeworld ships around here every now and then, we always make sure to clean up whatever messes we make when it comes to those things!”

“Y-yeah, we do!” Steven exclaimed with a small, assured smile. “After all, we’re the Crystal Gems! Helping people, helping the Earth, is our job! If only we could make those agents realize that too... Maybe if we try talking to them, they’ll realize that we’re not-”

“That’s not going to work,” Garnet shook her head, watching with scrutiny from above as more agents piled into the temple. “I have a feeling these agents aren’t going to listen to reason.”

“S-so what are we going to do?” Steven asked anxiously.

“Well, it seems as though we only have one choice,” Pearl remarked with an aggravated sigh. “We’ll need to leave Gravity Falls, possibly even the country, until further notice. At least for 100 years or so until all of this nonsense dies down.”

“Ugh, darn it!” Amethyst moaned in protest. “But I kinda liked it here!”

“Well its not like we have any other options, Amethyst!” the white Gem argued back, though it was clear she wasn’t too keen on the idea herself. “Those agents won’t let up, no matter how many times we drive them away! Of course, it’ll take some time to sneak past them and get everything out. We’ll have to find a way to move all of the bubbles, and pack up Steven’s things, but-”

“Wait!” Steven interupted, distraught even by the suggestion of leaving alone. “Pearl, we can’t just leave Gravity Falls! This place is my home, our home! Everyone we care about is here: Dad, Mr. Pines, Dipper, Mabel, we can’t just leave them all behind!”

“Steven’s right,” Garnet firmly agreed. “We are not leaving.”

“B-but the agents-”

“We’ll figure out a way to get rid of them,” the Gem leader interupted Pearl. “But we’re not going to let them drive us out of our home. This is where Rose wanted us to stay, the place she wanted us to protect, after she was gone, and we’re going to do exactly that, agents, or no agents.”

“Yeah! That’s the spirit, G!” Amethyst cheered, giving Steven a celebratory high five. “Always the rebel against the system! I love it! But uh… speaking of rebels… looks like they’re in the middle of hauling Stan off down there…” The purple Gem’s smile quickly faded as she glanced down towards the shack, where the vehicle Stan was in was just starting to pull away.

“I hate to say it, but that’s also rather odd that they’d want to arrest Stan, of all people,” Pearl mused. “True, he’s committed many illegal activities in the time that we’ve known him for alone, but nothing on the level that the law of the land would have any reason to go after him for… And all that talk of a ‘doomsday device’? It sounded way too far fetched to me…”

“So that means Mr. Pines has gotta be innocent, right?” Steven asked, his tone hopeful. “Then we need to do something to help him! And Dipper and Mabel too!”

“Uh, normally I’d be down for a good old-fashioned jailbreak, Steven, but… we should probably be keeping a low profile for now with all these agents running around,” Amethyst said with a pitied frown.

“Amethyst’s right,” Pearl nodded. “Knowing Stan, he’ll be able to figure his own way out of all this mess. And as for the twins, I… um… w-well I’m sure those agents won’t do anything to harm them, so-”

“No!” Steven protested, his hands clenched in tight fists at his sides as he looked to his guardians intently. “Dipper and Mabel risked their lives helping us break out of Peridot’s ship; it’s only fair that we save now in return! We owe it to them, you guys know we do! That’s why we have to go bust them out and do anything we can to help them and Mr. Pines! They’re our friends, heck, at this point it’s almost like they’re our second family! So, who’s with me!?”

“I am.” Garnet answered immediately, putting her hand on top of Steven’s outstretched one. “Steven’s right, we owe it to the twins, and in a way, to Stan too to help them.”

“Oh, you better believe I’m in!” Amethyst grinned daringly, slapping her hand down as well. “It’s jailbreak, part 2, baby! C’mon, Pearl, you know you want in on this action!”

“Ugh, I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this but… fine,” Pearl consented, well aware of just how risky this endeavor would be as she added her hand to the pile. “Though let’s please try to be careful about this, alright?”

“Great!” Steven sent a grateful grin to all three of his guardians, confident in the believe that together they could do this, no matter what obstacles were put in their way. “Then its all settled. It’s time for the Crystal Gems to save the day!”

As part of their intensive investigation, the government agents had taken up shop at the Gravity Falls police station, turning it into a temporary headquarters of sorts until they could take both their findings and their new convict back to Washington with them. Still, as eager as the agents were to book Stan and put him away, he still had to be properly processed first, including fingerprinting, mug shots, and of course, a proper round of scrutinizing interrogation.

“Stanford Pines,” Agent Powers began authoritatively as he stood before the detained conman. “You stand accused of theft of government waste, conspiracy, and possession of illegal weapons. How do you plead to these charges?”

“Uh, g-guilticent!” Stan exclaimed, his nerves driving him more than common sense. “I-I mean, innoguilty! I-I mean, uh… c-can I have my phone call now?”

Fortunately, Powers conceded to this request, allowing the conman to dial up whoever he chose. Of course, Stan was going to make this call count, and though he had been half tempted to call Greg up and ask for help giving the former rock star’s knowledge on the matter, he decided to go down a less incriminating route as he dialed up Soos instead.

Normally by this time, the handyman would have shown up for his shift at the shack, but of course, word of Stan’s arrest had already spread far and wide throughout town. Soos was practically in the midst of a meltdown over the news as he pulled up to the drive through at Yumberjacks, though he managed to compose himself just enough to place his hurried order. “Ok, gimme whatever you got that comes with a free toy.”

“Soos!” The handyman gasped upon suddenly hearing Stan’s voice out of the blue, and his initial assumption jumped to the restaurant’s lumberjack-shaped drive through speaker.

“Mr. Pines?!” Soos exclaimed, leaning out of his truck a bit to pat the speaker down. “Is this some sort of… possession situation?”

“Just pick up!” Stan shouted, the handyman realizing that his voice was coming from the walkie talking on his dashboard.

“Mr. Pines, what happened?” Soos asked, deeply concerned as he picked the walkie talkie up. “I heard you got arrested or something? I-I had to go get some panic food before heading over, but I-”

“Never mind that now,” Stan quickly interupted, knowing that he had to talk fast, lest the agents right on the other side of the door overhear him. “Listen, I need you to do something for me. You know that vending machine in the gift shop? I need you to guard it with your life. No matter what happens, no matter who talks to you, do not let them touch that machine!”

Before Soos could even think to ask any questions on this strange request, the walkie talking cut out, leaving the handyman a direct order from his boss that he was obligated to carry out, regardless of how odd it was. “Time for repair guy…” he began firmly, adjusting his hat. “To become a repair man.”

“Sir, your Junior Yum-Yum Baby-Time Kiddo Meal?” the drive through employee asked as Soos sternly pulled up to the window.

“Just put it in my mouth,” he commanded resolutely, gripping the steering wheel tightly as the employee pulled a fry out of the box and put it in the handyman’s open mouth. “Let’s do this.” With this steady proclamation, Soos set forth, driving straight through the nearby hedges as he sped off towards the direct of the Mystery Shack, determined to do as his boss had said down to the very letter, no matter what.

As caught off guard by the raid on the shack as they were, Dipper and Mabel were none too happy about being abruptly hauled away in wake of their uncle’s supposedly uncalled for arrest. But even still, very few of their questions and concerns were answered as Agent Trigger drove them away from the shack, stoic as always as he conversed with his partner through the vehicle’s video screen.

“We’ve got Mr. Pines in custody,” Powers reported from the police station. “Our men are searching the shack for that device and we still have a team hunting high and low for those Crystal Gems. You take care of those kids, Trigger.”

“Right,” Trigger staunchly nodded as the video feed cut out, leaving the twins to begin their ongoing barrage of questions anew.

“What are you gonna do to us?!” Mabel demanded as both her and Dipper sent the agent in the driver’s seat defiant glares.

“We’ll be taking you to child services,” Triggers remarked, not even bothering to glance back at the twins.

“Boo!” Mabel goaded crossly at this.

“Wait, that’s it?” Dipper asked incredulously. “Are you sure you guys don’t wanna, you know, interrogate us? See what we know about this whole ‘doomsday device’ thing?”

Trigger let out something of a mocking snicker upon hearing this, rolling his eyes at such a suggestion. “Kid, please. If we thought either of you actually knew anything about this, we would have pulled one of you aside for questioning a long time ago.”

“B-but what about all of the Gem stuff?!” Dipper protested, rather frustrated by this dry response. “We know about all of that. Heck, we were even there for a lot of it, and we-”

“Just quit while you’re ahead, kid,” Trigger cut him off, clearly disinterested as he pressed a button up front. “Here, enjoy some mindless reality TV, designed to pacify you and make you stop asking questions.”

As disgruntled as both twins were, they briefly glanced at the screen in front of them where a surgeon was just starting an operation on an unconscious patient. “I’m about to make the incision…”

“KER-PRANK!” a flamboyantly dressed young man suddenly jumped out from behind the nearby potted plant, aptly startling the focused surgeon.

“You’re watching KER-PRANKED with Justin Kerprank!” the announcer for the show exclaimed as the logo popped on screen.

Of course, the twins were quick to lose interest in this rather silly program, both of them well aware that they had much more important matters to discuss, especially now that Trigger seemed to be distracted. “I can’t believe it,” Dipper said quite petulantly as he crossed his arms. “These guys still won’t take me seriously, even though they know about all of the supernatural stuff in Gravity Falls now! How much more is it gonna take to get them to finally just listen!?”

“Dipper, who cares about getting these stuffy dodoheads to listen to anything?” Mabel asked with a huff of exasperation. “What matters right now is Grunkle Stan. There’s no way he was stealing hazardous waste! We gotta clear his name somehow! And we have to find a way to help keep Steven and the Gems from getting caught too! They don’t deserve to be experimented on in some creepy government lab!”

“…You’re right,” Dipper sighed, anchoring himself back to the matter at hand. “I don’t really know what we can do about the Gems at the moment, but as for Grunkle Stan…” he trailed off, pausing to glance around the vehicle for any kind of inspiration, only to get one in the security camera positioned near the driver’s seat. “Oh! Wait a minute! The security tapes! Didn’t Stan say he was restocking the gift shop last night? If we can get the Mystery Shack’s surveillance tapes, we could prove he’s innocent!”

“Great idea, bro-bro!” Mabel exclaimed, instantly on board with it. “Now we just need to think of a way out of here. Think, Mabel… think…”

“Uh, actually, it looks like you won’t have to think too hard over this one,” Dipper said, glancing out of the car’s back window.

“Why not?”

“Because our way out of here is coming up right behind us,” he nodded back to the window, prompting Mabel to look out as well. And indeed, rushing up along the road from behind was none other than Lion, toting Steven and all three of the Gems on his back as he fiercely raced after the vehicle.

“Go, Lion, go!” Steven cheered his pink pet onward, Amethyst chuckling wildly behind him as Pearl held tightly onto Garnet to remain on his back. “Aaaaand get ready with a portal in 3… 2… 1!”

At this command, Lion let out a piercing roar, a sonic blast ripping forth from him into the open air ahead, creating a tear in space time large enough for them all to get through. The portal reopened on the path ahead of the car, and the pink beast stopped squarely just several feet in front of the quickly approaching car.

“W-what the-?!” Agent Trigger exclaimed in alarm at the pink animal in his path, but before he even had time to slam down on the breaks, Lion roared once more, this time sending out only a simple sonic blast. The burst hit the front of the car squarely, sending it spinning off of its path and into the forest on the side of the road. “Mayday! Mayday! Agent down!” Trigger shouted through his com as the car sped down the hill, completely out of control. In the chaos, Dipper and Mabel were equally as frightened as they held onto their seats for dear life, until the car finally came to an abrupt, crashing halt courtesy of a cluster of well-placed trees. Fortunately, no one was harmed in the accident, though Trigger was quick to find that his door was jammed shut by the nearby trees, while the twins were able to easily slip out of the vehicle just as Lion arrived at the bottom of the hill with Steven and the Gems in tow.

“Dipper! Mabel!” the young Gem cried, hopping off the pink beast’s back to give both of his friends a relieved hug. “I’m so glad you guys are ok!”

“You’re glad we’re ok?” Dipper couldn’t help but let out a small laugh at this. “Steven, you guys are the ones who are technically on the run from the U.S. Government, aren’t you?”

“Technically,” Garnet cut in with a small smile.

“Still, you two aren’t hurt, are you?” Pearl asked the twins, concerned. “We apologize for our rather… unorthodox way of rescuing you two. It was Amethyst’s idea…”

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?” the purple Gem shrugged.

“Backup! Requesting backup!” Trigger exclaimed to his com, sending an alarmed glare the Gems’ way. “The Crystal Gems are right here at my location! I require at least an entire support squadron in order to neutralize-”

The agent was abruptly cut off by Dipper, who ended up swiping Trigger’s earpiece away before defiantly crushing it on the ground in order to keep the agent cut off from the rest of his team. “Nice one,” Garnet remarked, sending Dipper a nod of approval.

“Grrr, you aliens will never get away with this!” Trigger shouted, infuriated. “And neither will you kids for siding with them! They’re a dangerous extraterrestrial threat and they’ll end up destroying this entire planet if they’re not taken care of immediately!”

“Geez, calm down, dude,” Amethyst rolled her eyes. “What, do you think we’re gonna like ‘abduct’ you onto our ‘spaceship’ and ‘probe’ you or something like that? Ha! Come on, man, get real.”

“Thanks for bailing us out, you guys,” Mabel said to the Gems with a grateful smile. “But we still need to do the same for Grunkle Stan.”

“And fortunately, we have a plan about how we’re going to clear his name,” Dipper assured confidently.

“Really? That’s great!” Steven beamed, already hopping back onto Lion. “So, what are we waiting for? Let’s go save Mr. Pines!”

“Oh, you poor kids. Do you really think your uncle’s innocent?” Trigger shook his head sympathetically. By now, Steven, the Gems, and Mabel had already moved on to head back to the shack, but Dipper happened to linger back a bit as the agent continued his almost rather sincere appeal. “I’ve seen it all before. False names, double lives… One minute they’re playing with water balloons, the next they’re building doomsday devices. Your uncle scammed the whole world. Are you really gonna let him scam you too?”

Dipper took pause upon hearing this, somewhat jolted by everything the agent had just said. Stan had to be innocent, it just made no sense for him to be the mastermind behind a villainous plot as massive as a doomsday machine. And yet… how did any of them really know that for sure? After all, the conman was a proven pathological liar when it came to his business practices; who was to say he hadn’t lied about other things? Much more important, potentially life-threatening things?

Yet certainly, even if he was involved in some notorious scheme like this, Stan would have told at least his nibblings. If he was transparent with no one else, he was with them. And even beyond that following the zombie incident weeks ago, Stan had promised he wasn’t harboring any other secrets concerning Gravity Falls, a promise that Dipper wanted to believe, that for the most part, he did believe. Which meant that despite the agent’s warnings and his own fledgling doubts, Stan was innocent.

Right?

“You… you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dipper finally said, the hesitance in his tone clear as he briefly glanced back at Trigger before staunchly moving on to catch up with the others.

“You’re gonna regret this!” Trigger shouted after the entire group prior to his airbag bursting out and uncomfortably trapping him in his car even more.

Stan huffed impatiently as he sat alone in the interrogation room, his hands still cuffed tightly behind his back, making any real movement largely impossible. Powers and his cronies were off somewhere handling the proper paperwork to formally put him away, which left the conman with some much-needed time to try and come up with a way to escape. It was true that Stan had been in some tight spots before, but he had never gotten himself in enough trouble to be wanted by the whole of the U.S. Government itself. He had also never been arrested at such an integral time before, which meant that his escape would have to be both quick and discreet. There would be time to deal with the consequences later; now was the time for action.

“Only five more hours till it happens…” Stan muttered to himself, glancing back at his wristwatch as it continued to count down. “I gotta be there! Come on, Stan, you have to think of a way outta this...” Frustrated, the conman pounded his head against the table in front of him, hoping it could get his jumbled thoughts flowing. “Think! Think!”

Stan was quickly caught of guard as his watch suddenly beeped, a warning reading ‘anomaly in progress’ coming with it. Alarmed, the conman lifted his head off the table, only to see the coffee few feet in front of him begin to lift up out of its mug on its own accord before the mug and everything else on the table did the same. They came crashing back down a moment later, but still, the abrupt reversal of gravity on display surprised Stan nonetheless as he noticed exactly what kind of effect the machine was having on the world around it, just as the journal had warned.

“They’re getting stronger…” he noted before letting out a gasp of realization as to how he could end up using this to his advantage. “Of course! That’s it!”

What the conman didn’t put much stock into as he began to plot out his jailbreak was the fact that these gravity anomalies spread far beyond simply the police station. The entire town took notice when, in the middle of their daily activities, they were suddenly lifted off their feet and into the air several inches, cars and bikes and even some trees being uplifted along with them. As everything and everyone clumsily fell back to their usual spots on the ground, a ripple of apt confusion seemed to ripple through the townsfolk on main street in particular as they picked themselves up off the ground.

“Is it just me, or did the entire world just hiccup?” Tyler Cutebiker asked Lazy Susan as they helped each other back up.

“I’m sure it was just a baby-sized earthquake,” the waitress smiled with a wave of her hand.

“Aw, baby sized!”

“That was no earthquake!” Ronaldo shouted as he frantically ran out of Gravity Fries. “It was the Sneople! They’re back and they’re reversing the sky and the ground in order to suck us into their reptilian trap and devour us all!”

“Ronaldo, for the last time!” Fryman scolded, pulling his frantic son back into the shop. “There are no Sneople!”

“Sneople or no Sneople, I am not closing my restaurant and evacuating again!” Kofi scoffed, stepping out of Fish Stew Pizza. “The last time I lost three days’ worth of profits! It was ridiculous!”

“So… we just don’t do anything then?” Kiki asked as she stood alongside her father. All of the others gathered nearby casually shrugged in muted agreement with this plan, none of them too keen on fleeing town again, especially since this strange occurrence didn’t seem to be anything too dangerous or severe.

However, not everyone thought so, for over at the junkyard, McGucket was in an absolute frenzy, the laptop blaring bright red with a steadily decreasing countdown. A countdown that was ticking down to nothing less than complete and utter devastation. “It’s happenin’!” McGucket cried as he rushed to pack up his few belongings and flee while he still had a chance. “The end times! When that machine activates… I gotta get out of town! Get in there, racoon wife! Git!” he shouted, shoving said racoon into his knapsack before rushing out of his hut, the laptop in tow. And with that, the hillbilly made his hurried, fearful flight, desperately searching for any place of refuge from the disastrous end he knew was coming.

Traveling on Lion made getting back to the Mystery Shack quite quick and efficient as the collective group of Gems and kids traveled through the woods rather than by the road to avoid detection by any agents. As they approached the shack, they all gathered behind a row of trees on the boarder of the property, which was essentially swarming with agents both standing on guard and investigating just about everything in sight. The shack itself had been roped off with police tape, and it was easy to tell, even from the outside, that the building was infested with investigators, all of them in search of any further clues about that supposed doomsday device they claimed was hidden somewhere inside.

“Alright, so here’s the plan,” Mabel began, tucking back down behind the trees as she addressed the others. “I’ll start by taking out those two guard guys, then Dipper, you find a stick or something to use as a sword and chop that other due in the neck with it, then Steven, you can use your shield to cover us from behind as Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl beat up any of the other guys who try to stop us until we backflip through the front door!”

“Good plan,” Garnet nodded in stoic approval.

“I like it, but… do you think there’s a way we could get in there without hurting any of those agents?” Steven asked with a frown. “They are just here to do their jobs after all.”

“So are we, Steven,” Pearl reminded, glaring towards the temple up the while, which had been completely taken over by agents at that point.

“So, are we gonna bust these guys up and sneak in there or what?” Amethyst asked, already summoning her whip. “Cause I’ve been wanting to do knock their heads in ever since they rushed the place this morning.”

“Uh, actually, aren’t you guys forgetting the simpler solution?” Dipper asked, nodding up towards the open attic window.

“Oh, right,” Mabel said, understanding his intent as she pulled her grappling hook out. With a well-aimed strike, the hook latched onto the side of the window, allowing Dipper, Mabel, and Steven to slide up along its rope while the agents who should have been standing guard were fortunately distracted by the rock-that-looks-like-a-face-rock. Once all three of them were safely inside, the Gems followed, Pearl deftly walking across the cord like a tightrope while Amethyst rowdily climbed up it and Garnet swung across it up to the window. Knowing that they had to be stealthy and discreet to avoid detection, everyone was as quiet as possible as they crept downstairs from the attic, following the twins’ lead as they narrowly kept out of sight of the agents in the living room before making it to Stan’s office.

“We made it!” Steven grinned, exchanging a three-way fist bump with the twins as they made sure to lock the door tightly behind them. “So now that we’re here, what’s the plan?”

“We need to find where Stan keeps the shack’s surveillance tapes,” Dipper explained, already starting to look for them at the conman’s desk. “If we can find the tape from last night, then we’ll be able to prove to those agents that he didn’t steal that illegal waste!”

“Wait, that’s what you guys are digging around in here for?” Amethyst asked with a wry grin. “Pffft, you should have just said so. Luckily for us, I know all of Stan’s tricks...” The purple Gem’s smile widened as she stretched her hand up towards the jackalope head hanging from the wall, pushing its bent antler into place. With this hidden switch activated, the bookshelf on the far wall suddenly flipped over, revealing the shack’s extensive collection of security tapes as well as a tv to view them on.

“Yes!” the kids cheered as they ran forward, perusing through the tapes for the most recent one.

“Well, Amethyst, I have to hand it to you,” Pearl remarked to her teammate with a satisfied smile. “I never thought your rather… bizarre camaraderie with Stan would actually end up coming in handy.”

“Hey, what can I say?” the purple Gem smirked with a shrug. “Paling around with the old guy has its perks. Plus, I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he realizes it was my know-how that bailed him out again, it’ll be hilarious!”

“Aha! Here it is!” Mabel interupted, holding one of the tapes of. “The one from this week! Here we go!” Without any further hesitation, she slid the tape into the player, only for it to open up on a clip of Mabel, Soos, and Wendy in the gift shop, with Garnet leaning against the counter and nodding her head in time to the music the handyman was wiggling on the floor to as the girls cheered him on.

“Someone yelled ‘wormy dance’,” Mabel explained to the others, who were giving her a rather curious look.

“It was me,” Garnet grinned slightly, raising her hand in admittance.

“Ha! I knew it!” Mabel exclaimed, snapping her fingers until she met Dipper’s impatient expression. “Oh, right. Go ahead and fast-forward.”

Dipper did so, zooming through the tape by several days until it at last reached an image of Stan at the counter, peacefully piling up knick-knacks as he often did. “Ha! There it is! Stan restocking just like he said!” Dipper said with a satisfied smile. “And the date shows it was last night! This is proof that he’s innocent!”

“So that’s it then,” Steven smiled brightly. “This was all just one big misunderstanding! We just gotta show this to those agents and they’ll let Mr. Pines off the hook for sure!”

“Uh… not so fast, kids…” Pearl frowned, nodding back up to the screen. Stan had stopped stocking around 7 PM, casting a careful glance around the shop before stepping outside. Fast-forwarding an hour revealed that the conman still hadn’t returned, something that set the entire group watching on edge as they wondered exactly what he could have been up to for so long.

“Um… m-maybe he’s just going to the bathroom outdoors,” Mabel suggested with an uneven smile. “The way nature intended?”

“For an hour?” Dipper asked, raising a doubtful eyebrow.

‘O-or he might have just gone on another one of those Revenge Trips with Amethyst!” Steven added looking over to the rather alarmed purple Gem. “R-right?”

Amethyst hesitated, biting her lip anxiously as she looked screen, where the hours continued to go by, with no sign of Stan returning in sight. Still, she quickly forced a smile as she glanced back to the kids, all of them looking to her almost desperately for a confirmation that the conman had been with her last night rather than the suspected alternative. “Uh…. S-sure!” she shrugged awkwardly. “We… we’ll go with that!”

“Amethyst…” Garnet shook her head disapprovingly at her teammate’s idea to cover for the conman.

“O-ok, so… he wasn’t hanging out with me…” Amethyst admitted sheepishly, shrinking back somewhat. “B-but he totally could have been! If he had, ya know… asked me to go with him…”

“Well, if he wasn’t with you, then where was-” Pearl was cut off as the tape arrived at 5 AM. Exactly at that point, an unknown figure walked into the gift shop, fully clad in a hazmat suit and wheeling in a large barrel that was clearly labeled as radioactive waste.

“Oh no, Stan, you didn’t…” Dipper said, his hopes for the conman’s innocence sinking immediately upon seeing this.

“D-don’t panic!” Mabel quickly reassured as everyone else simply watched the figure pull more barrels into the shack in apt dismay. “That could be anyone in that suit!”

This theory was instantly proven wrong, however, as the figure on the tape accidentally dropped one of the waste barrels onto his foot, eliciting a familiar cry of pain in an unmistakably familiar voice. “Augh! Hot Belgian waffles!” he shouted, gripping his injured foot. “Wait… I’m alone! I can swear for real! SON OF A-”

At this, Pearl rushed forward to shut the tv off before the kids could hear said swear, while everyone else shared a disturbed, uncertain glance in light of who’s voice they had just heard. “Well, there’s no doubt about it, that’s totally Stan,” Amethyst shook her head incredulously before letting out a frustrated huff. “I don’t get it though… If he was gonna go as far as to pull a crazy heist like that, why didn’t he come and ask me for help, just like he always does!?”

“Amethyst, that’s not important right now!” Pearl scolded. “What’s important is that Stan seems to be every bit as guilty as those agents said he was! And what really is baffling is how he thought he could possibly get away with pulling a hairbrained scheme like this off without getting caught! Of all of the ridiculous capers he’s pulled over the years, this one by far is the most nonsensical!”

“You’re right, Pearl,” Garnet mused, a hand to her chin as she continued looking to the security footage. By all accounts, her future vision was still strangely static, refusing to give her the answers she was looking for in regards to all this, but she didn’t see the need to inform the others of that. At least not yet. “It doesn’t make any sense as to why Stan would do something like this…”

“W-well… what if he had a really good reason for why he needed all that stuff?” Steven asked, his tone undeniably apprehensive.

“S-Steven’s right!” Mabel chimed in just as anxiously. “So what if Grunkle Stan stole a little toxic waste? That doesn’t mean he’s leading a nefarious double life!”

“Uh… Mabel?” Dipper spoke up as he pulled out the box that had been tucked away underneath the shelves of security tapes. “I’m not so sure about that…”

As soon as they had hoisted the box onto Stan’s desk, everyone curiously began to look through it, only to be unanimously stunned by what they found. It was filled to the brim with all sorts of documents, from driver’s licenses to passports to newspaper clippings and everything in between, all of them connecting back to Stan somehow, though no two of them were exactly the same.

“W-what is all this?” Mabel asked, picking up one of the countless drivers license inside of the box. “‘Stetson Pinefield’?”

“‘Hal Forester’?” Dipper read off another license, growing steadily more confused and suspicious. “‘Andrew ‘8-Ball’ Alcatraz’? You guys, these are fake IDs! You wouldn’t need these unless you were trying to hide your real identity!”

“B-but why would Stan do that?” Mabel wondered, shaking her head incredulously.

“Guys, look at these,” Steven cut in, holding up a stack of official documents. “Legal Notice: Stan Pines is hereby banned for life from the State of New Jersey. And Pennsylvania… And Delaware… And Ohio… And Texas… and a bunch of other states too! But why?”

“Amethyst, did you know about all this?” Pearl asked the purple Gem, clearly unnerved.

“Uh, o-of course I did!” Amethyst quickly replied, her manner tense as everyone looked to her. All the same, there was a hint of betrayal in her tone as she looked between the box of fake IDs and the rest of the group, none of them really believing her and her lack of a conviction on this lie. “I, uh… S-Stan’s told me about all of this stuff a super long time ago! A-after all, w-why would he hide junk like this from me? I-I know him better than anyone!”

“Amethyst, now isn’t the time to lie for Stan,” Garnet advised. “We need answers and we need them now.”

The purple Gem flinched at just how serious her leader’s tone was, and its harshness was more than enough to get her to cave. “Ok, fine! I’ve never seen any of this stuff before, alright?!” she exclaimed, running a hand through her hair as a sign of her severe stress with these unfurling revelations. “I… I-its just, why wouldn’t he tell me about at least some of this stuff?! I thought the two of us were a team, we have been for the past 22 years! What could be so huge and so important that he’d need to keep it a secret from me?!”

Mabel quickly caught everyone’s attention as she let out a stark gasp of alarm at the newspaper clipping in her hands, her eyes wide as she stared down at the headline before handing it off to her brother. Likewise, Dipper froze in equal shock at the headline, though he managed to regain his bearings just enough to shakily read it aloud to everyone else. “‘S-Stan Pines Dead’?!”

“What?!” everyone else asked in apt surprise upon hearing this, all of them crowding around the twins to see what else this article had to say.

“H-how can Mr. Pines be dead!?” Steven asked in complete disbelief. “We just saw him a few hours ago and he looked pretty alive then!”

“T-this is from almost 30 years ago!” Pearl exclaimed, shaking her head as she read the article’s date. “Which… if I remember correctly… is about the time Stan showed up here in Gravity Falls, i-isn’t it?”

“I… I think so…” Garnet said, placing a hand against her temple. “But… its foggy for some reason… And I certainly don’t remember anything about him dying…”

“‘Foul play suspected in Pines’ death’,” Mabel read from the article, gripping the clipping frantically. “‘Fiery crash, breaks cut…’ By who?”

“‘Unnamed grifter at large’?” Dipper read from yet another clipping showing a picture of Stan. “Why would they call him unnamed? Unless Stan isn’t actually…”

“Stan?!” everyone questioned in nervous unison as they glanced behind them at the large portrait of the conman hanging right on the wall behind them. His grin was wide and proud, something that usually no one would have ever thought twice about but now, it seemed so much more mysterious and sinister as it left all of them, kids and Gems alike, wondering exactly what his true history and motives were. In their search for Stan’s innocence, they had stumbled across something that seemed to incriminate him much more than before, putting into question literally everything they knew about him, from his past, to his intentions, to even his identity. To the Gems, these revelations were incredibly alarming on their own, seeing as how they had lived next to the conman for years now, but none of them, not even Amethyst, had ever had any inclination to his seeming double life. But to the kids, everything they had just uncovered was far more baffling. Steven always saw the best in everyone and Stan was certainly no exception to this, given his father’s camaraderie with the conman but despite the apparent tension between him and his mother. However, it seemed as though Stan seemed to harbor just as many dark secrets as Rose herself, something that left the young Gem completely uncertain on where to stand amidst it all. Dipper and Mabel, on the other hand, were even more torn over the matter, especially considering this was their uncle, of all people. Or maybe he wasn’t their uncle at all, if his false identities were any proof to the contrary. True, they had never really known too much about Stan’s past, but up until now they had never thought they really needed to. And now it was quite clear as to why the conman never spoke too much about it in the first place: because the secrets buried within it were some of the most incredible and sinister they had ever uncovered.

“None of this makes any sense!” Dipper exclaimed as he began pacing, trying his best to calm down amidst all of these increasing bombshell revelations. “If Stan isn’t actually Stan, then who have we been living with for the entire summer?!”

“Y-you’ve been living with Stan, duh!” Amethyst snapped, her hands clenched in tight fists at her sides. “The fake IDs and junk are all whatever! It’s still him, I know it!”

“Do you, Amethyst?” Pearl asked rather coldly. “Do you really know its actually him? Or are you sure he’s not really a master criminal who really did build some kind of doomsday machine and plans on using it to wreak havoc across the entire planet!?”

“Don’t be dumb, Pearl!” the purple Gem shot back just as fiercely. “Stan would never, ever do something like that! Even if it totally sucks that he hid all this stuff from me, I know him! And so do all of you guys!” she glared over at the startled trio of kids beside her. “So back me up on this! Stan’s not some crazy psycho villain, right?!”

A brief bout of silence passed between the kids, with Dipper not offering a response at all as he instead looked away rather bitterly, lost amidst doubts and frustrations that were too much to simply suppress by this point. Steven was also silent, biting his lip as he glanced down apprehensively, not having the faintest idea about what to say at such a tense juncture. Mabel, on the other hand, was just as adamant as Amethyst was when it came to Stan’s innocence, and she had no qualms about showing just that. “Right,” she nodded firmly before looking back to the stack of evidence against the conman they had compiled. “Still, there has to be some kind of explanation… Maybe we’re getting Ker-Pranked! Justin Kerprank is gonna jump up from behind one of these plants any minute now!” she quipped, glancing behind the nearby potted plan in the desperate hope that her rather weak theory was somehow true. “A-any minute now, Justin…”

“I-I can’t believe it…” Dipper muttered, just as dedicated to this resolve for the truth, even if he was still a bit wary of discovering it. “All summer I’ve been looking for answers, and the biggest mystery was right under our noses this whole time! This could be bigger than anything we’ve discovered so far!”

“And that’s why can’t keep jumping to conclusions or making excuses,” Garnet said, her tone rigid as she glanced over at her teammates. “Whatever’s going on here, we need to get to the bottom of it, whether Stan really is Stan or not, and whether he’s responsible for a doomsday machine or not. We have to find the truth, no matter what it might be and how much might change as a result of it.”

“W-well, maybe there’s something we might have missed in here that’ll fill in all the holes!” Steven suggested, rifling through what was left in the box on the desk until he found something of note. “Huh? What’s this? ‘Secret code to hideout’?”

“Hideout?” Amethyst raised a confused eyebrow. “Stan doesn’t have a hideout. Well… at least I thought he didn’t… Guess that was just another thing he never bothered to tell me about…”

“Let me see that,” Dipper said, taking the slip of paper from Steven and holding it up against the journal’s code page for comparison. “‘A1, B… C3’? I’ve never seen a code like this before…”

“Wait! I have!” Mabel exclaimed with a gasp of realization and hope. Hope that whatever this was, it would bring them closer to the answers they were all so desperately searching for. “You guys, it’s the vending machine in the gift shop! Come on! Let’s go check it out!”

As Mabel was quick to lead the way, the others all readily followed, knowing that they had no choice but to take this new lead, as odd as it was. Still, none of them were really sure what they were going to find, if anything at all, as they continued unraveling this massive web of lies and deceit that Stan himself had apparently entangled them all within.

Stan shifted restlessly in his seat as he looked back at his watch again, a spark of dread filling him as he saw that only a mere 13 minutes remained. 13 minutes until everything finally came together and here he was, trapped in a police station on the other end of town. But not for too much longer, he reminded himself. For as Powers and a few other officers entered the interrogation room, the conman knew that his daring escape was in sight.

“Alright, Pines, playtime is over,” Powers remarked as stoically as ever. “The chopper’s ready to dust off to Washington. I’ll enjoy putting you away.”

“What?” Stan balked, not ready to be hauled off so soon seeing as how his plan was so heavily dependent on proper timing. “Uh, c-can’t we stick around for maybe one more minute? O-one minute thirty seconds?”

“We’re not falling for your games, Pines,” Powers staunchly refused. “You’ve been running your whole life. Your time is finally up.”

“B-bathroom break?” Stan continued to plea as he cast an anxious glance up at the clock. “Just give me fifteen seconds!”

“Sorry, but you’ve got a flight to catch,” Powers said as he moved to unlock the conman’s cuffs.

Stan prepared to make another last ditch appeal before his watch happened to beep at just the right moment. “Oh yeah?” he asked with a wry, confident smirk, knowing that everything was finally going according to plan. “So do you.”

“Huh?” Powers only had time to ask before gravity abruptly began to reverse itself, the effect stronger than every this time. All of the agents let out startled gasps as they were picked up from their spots on the ground, unable to regain their grip on the world as they floated about the room in absolute upheaval. And while they were lost amidst the newfound chaos, Stan used it to his advantage as his chair also rose up into the air, allowing him to kick the free-floating table at the row of agents in front of him. As Powers frantically attempted to anchor himself to something behind him, Stan acted quickly, ramming the head agent with the back of his chair hard enough to knock him into the wall. As his chair happened to flip over in the gravity-free air, the conman grabbed the keys right out of Powers’ hands, uncuffing himself and finally freeing him up from his restraints as he made his escape.

“Hey! Get back here!” Powers shouted hotly from his spot against the wall. “Men, get him!”

The other officers attempted to do so, clumsily swimming through the air as Stan easily evaded all of them. The conman ended up using one of the agents as a boost, jumping off of his chest and claiming his lost, floating wallet in the process as he launched himself towards the door while Powers angrily shouted after him the entire time.

“No! You won’t get away with this!” he yelled, pushing himself off the wall after Stan. The conman was ready for him though as he slammed the door squarely in the agent’s face just as the gravity anomaly ended. As everything fell back to the ground, Stan locked the door to the interrogation room with a satisfied grin as he landed on his feet, though he knew he had no time to waste in holding his victory over their heads, especially with only about 10 minutes left on the countdown.

While the rest of the police station was still in a state of confusion over gravity’s recent reversal, the conman rushed outside, fortunately finding a taxi sitting right outside. Stan hadn’t exactly planned that far ahead, but he was quick to improvise as he rushed up to the idling cab, knowing that this would help him get back to the shack exponentially quicker. “Hey, do you know where the Mystery Shack is?” the conman asked the driver breathlessly.

“Uh, yeah?” the driver responded, somewhat confused by Stan’s seemingly frantic manner.

“Ok, here’s a hundred bucks,” the conman pulled a hundred out of the wallet he had stolen from one of the agents. “Drive as far away from the shack as possible and don’t stop when the cops start chasing you!”

The driver took pause at this, giving Stan a somewhat bewildered glance, but even so, he shrugged in acceptance at this strange request before taking the money and speeding off. The conman acted quickly after this, hiding behind a nearby overturned car as Powers and the other agents emerged from the station.

“He’s getting away!” Powers shouted upon spotting the retreating taxi. “Obviously, follow that cab!”

Stan smirked as he watched the agents follow the bait he had set for them, leaving him free to hurry back to the shack on foot. Still, things were far from over; with less than 10 minutes left, the conman had not a second to lose, or else everything he had worked for over the past 30 years would be all for nothing. Which meant he couldn’t waste a moment thinking of anything else, not the agents, not the Gems, not even his own nibblings as he raced back to where everything he had ever hoped for, everything he had ever dreamed of, was about to become wide open. Literally.

The majority of agents who weren’t currently on the hunt for the Crystal Gems were still scouring the shack, searching it high and low for any further relevant clues, a search that, by all accounts, had been rather futile thus far. However, their investigation was quickly brought to an end as Agent Trigger pulled up to the shack, having been rescued from the crash by a few other agents, to report the latest news Powers had just passed along to him.

“Stanford escaped!” Trigger shouted to all of the other officers. “He’s at large! We need to sweep the town! And keep looking for those Crystal Gems while you’re at it! They’re still out there somewhere too! Move! Move! Move!”

The agents were quick to file out at this command, piling into vehicles and choppers as they dispersed to track their assigned targets down and subdue them once and for all. And fortunately, they left at just the right time, for as soon as they had vacated the premises, Soos happened to arrive, slipping in through the gift shop’s open window to carry out the odd responsibility Stan had entrusted him with. “Alright, Soos, remember the plan,” the handyman said to himself, firmly planting himself in front of the vending machine. “Protect the machine, earn Stan’s trust, get legally adopted by Stan, change name to Stan Jr.”

“Soos?”

“Ah!” Soos let out a fearful shout, only to calm down upon seeing that it was only the Gems and the kids had just entered the gift shop. “Oh, you guys! Where have you all been?”

“Just about everywhere, it feels like…” Steven said, somewhat exhausted by the barrage of revelations they had been faced with in the past few hours alone.

“Soos, what are you doing here?” Dipper asked, aptly confused by the handyman’s rather random presence.

“Stan gave me a mission to protect this machine,” Soos informed with a proud smile. “Ha! And I thought I loved snacks.”

Upon hearing this news, the Gems and the kids all exchanged a concerned glance, all of them realizing that if Stan had specifically asked Soos to guard the vending machine, then certainly it must be yet another piece of this quickly growing puzzle after all. “Soos,” Garnet stepped forward, her tone authoritative. “We need you to step aside and let us see that machine.”

“U-uh, well…” the handyman flinched, quite intimidated by the Gem leader’s rigid manner. “I-I can’t… Mr. Pines said-”

“Listen, Soos,” Dipper interjected earnestly. “Something huge is going on here. If Stan is hiding some dangerous secret, we need to find out what it is!”

“And based on what we’ve uncovered thus far, that vending machine, of all things, may very well help us do just that!” Pearl added with apt resolve.

“Yeah, just let us through so we can prove this is all just a big misunderstanding!” Mabel encouraged, offering the clearly anxious handyman a reassuring smile.

“Guys, I-I know this seems crazy, but I promised Stan I would guard this with my life,” Soos contested with a fretful frown. “I can’t let him down on this!”

By this point, the Gems were at something of a loss over what to do; while they wanted to access the vending machine, it was clear that the handyman was heavily intent on doing whatever he had to to protect it under Stan’s orders. The kids, fortunately, had a plan of their own in mind, one that they acted upon, one that they wordlessly put into action as Mabel stepped forward.

“I’m sorry, Soos,” she said, pulling her hands out from behind her back before blowing a handful of glitter right into the unsuspecting handyman’s face.

“Ah! Attack glitter!” Soos cried, trying to wipe the sparkly substance out of his eyes as Steven and Dipper both rushed forward. “It’s pretty but it hurts!”

At this juncture, Mabel joined the boys in pouncing on the handyman, trying their best to either pull him away from the machine or press their way past him to get to it as the Gems stood by, watching the scene before them in apt bewilderment. “Aw, c’mon! I don’t wanna fight you guys! This hurts me more than it hurts you!” Soos exclaimed, struggling to pull the kids off of him only to end up accidentally getting kicked in the face. “Ow! Seriously it hurts me way more than it hurts you!”

“Sorry, Soos!” Steven sincerely apologized amidst the ongoing struggle. “But we gotta get to that machine!”

“B-But I gotta keep it safe, dudes!” Soos argued, not even noticing Dipper leaning over his shoulder to input the code on the keypad. He barely managed to do so, but the moment it was fully entered, the entire machine swung forward, as if it was a door, knocking Soos and the kids back into the Gems and knocking them all to the floor. And when they glanced up at what lay just beyond the machine, they were all unanimously shocked by what the saw.

The vending machine had indeed acted as a door, one that opened to a short, hidden staircase leading down to what looked like an elevator. As everyone gathered around this new, mysterious opening, no one really knew what to say, seeing as how literally anything could be waiting at the end of this newfound path.

“W-what’s down there?” Pearl asked in a tense whisper, gripping onto Garnet’s arm tightly.

“I… I-I don’t…” the Gem leader trailed off as everyone looked to her for answers. Answers that her failing future vision failed to provide her with. Still, she tried, so very hard, to break past the wall of fog that was keeping her away from her usual foresight, that was blocking her from seeing the dangers that might await them all below. Yet in the end, she still saw nothing, leaving her in complete and utter darkness at the very worst of times. “I-I don’t know!” Garnet finally shouted, pounding her first against the backside of the vending machine in apt frustration.

“W-what do you mean you don’t know?” Dipper asked, alarmed that Garnet, of all people, hadn’t the faintest clue about what they were about to find. “What about your future vision?”

“It’s not… it’s not working,” the Gem leader shook her head she placed a hand against it. “It hasn’t been all day. I don’t know why… It hasn’t done this since… since that puppet show a few weeks ago…”

“What?” all three of the kids asked in startled unison, their eyes wide as they exchanged an alarmed glance. Of course, they instantly had a theory as to why Garnet’s future vision might have failed to function that day, but they weren’t able to even voice it as Amethyst spoke up instead.

“S-so… I guess we’re goin’ in blind then?” she asked apprehensively as she nodded towards the staircase.

“We have no other choice…” Garnet confirmed, adjusting her shades as she took the lead into the unknown.

“Dude… its like something out a video game…” Soos muttered as they descended down the rather dark staircase.

“Or a dream…” Mabel whispered just as tightly.

“Or a nightmare…” Dipper shuddered, realizing that with Garnet’s future vision out of the equation, there was literally no telling what they were about to find.

“I-its so strange…” Pearl said as they reached the elevator at the bottom of the stairs, as well as the code panel resting on the wall beside it. “It’s like… all of this is… familiar somehow… Almost as if… I know this…” Absently, the white Gem’s hand went towards the keypad of odd symbols, her fingers lightly pressing several of them in a very specific order. An order that ended up being the exact keycode needed to open up the elevator before them.

“Whoa!” Steven exclaimed, absolutely amazed by this. “Pearl, how did you know that code would work?”

“I-I didn’t!” the white Gem shook her head, her eyes wide as she looked between her hands and the elevator. “I… I just… i-it… it’s like I… r-remembered it somehow…”

“You remembered it?” Dipper asked, before looking to all three of the Gems incredulously. “You guys don’t think all of this could have to do with your missing memories… do you?”

The Gems all looked to each other, their expressions mutually torn and tight as they considered this possibility and everything it could possibly mean. “N-no, no way,” Amethyst shook her head, refusing to believe that Stan had anything remotely to do with their lost memories. “I-it’s gotta be some kind of weird coincidence! Now, come on. Let’s just go down here already and see what’s really going on.”

Knowing that there was no point in standing around and deliberating the matter any further, the others agreed, packing into the elevator and descending down even further to what was apparently the very bottom floor. And when the doors slid open, not a single one of them was able to explain what lay before them.

Upon a first glance, it seemed to be some sort of technological lab, with strange machines and monitors of all sorts lining the walls on either side of the long, narrow room. And at the end of it, on the other side of a large glass window, was a radiant, glowing blue light, one that poured into the darkened room as the group cautiously stepped inside of it.

“W-what is all this?” Steven wondered in a muted whisper, hanging close by his equally stunned guardians as they approached the light before them.

“Guys, are we dreaming?” Mabel asked, every bit as apprehensive. “Someone wake me up…”

“I-I don’t understand,” Soos shook his head as he looked to a nearby scanning machine. “Why would Mr. Pines have all this?”

“This can’t be real…” Dipper remarked, his tone both tense and incredulous as he was still trying to soak it all in. “It’s just like that bunker in the woods…”

“B-but what on earth would all of this be doing under the Mystery Shack, of all places?” Pearl wondered, absolutely baffled.

“Everyone,” Garnet spoke up, standing at the desk at the edge of the room and looking to what lay beyond it. “Look at that…”

The others turned their attention to the room just past the apparent lab they were in, which was much more open and cavernous. However, no one paid that as much mind as its central feature: an enormous metallic structure, one that was in the decisive shape of an inverted triangle. It was the source of the piercing blue glow, which came from the large circular hole in its center and seemed to grow brighter and more blinding by the second. But what was by far most alarming was the fact that, fixated to the edges of this machine were replica gemstones, very familiar ones to everyone present.

“Guys! Look!” Steven exclaimed as he pointed them out. “There’s Pearl’s gem! A-and Sapphire’s! And Ruby’s! And Amethyst’s! A-and… and mine?” He froze upon getting a glimpse at the undoubtedly familiar pink gem resting near the foot of the device.

“No,” Pearl whispered, placing a tight hand on her ward’s shoulder as she noticed the rose-shaped symbol right above it. “Rose’s… T-that’s Rose’s gem! All our gems! W-what are they doing on… on that thing?!”

“What’s this thing even supposed to be in the first place?!” Amethyst asked, her hands in tight fists at her sides as she was struck by a crushing realization. All this time Stan had not only been keeping such a huge secret from her, but now it seemed as though it was a secret she was somehow involved in herself, without even knowing it. And the feeling of betrayal she got from that alone was almost enough to drive her mad.

“Whatever it is, I feel a massive amount of power coming from it,” Garnet said, her tone gravely serious. “It looks like we may have just found that doomsday device after all…”

The kids all let out a startled gasp at this, but even so, Mabel in particular refused to believe it so readily. “O-ok, ok,” she cut in with a very forced smile. “L-let’s not jump to conclusions here. So he’s got a huge underground lab and a weird glowy machine with the Gems’ gems on it for some reason. That doesn’t mean anything bad! Everyone’s got secrets!” At this, she grabbed the picture of both herself and Dipper that Stan kept on his desk, taking it as a much needed sign that the conman’s intentions were still good, despite all the evidence pointing against that. “It’s still Stan, and he loves us! A-and we love him, right?”

“…Y-yeah,” Steven hesitantly agreed with a small, supportive smile. “Yeah, you’re right, Mabel. All of this stuff is… kinda crazy, yeah, but there’s gotta be a good reason behind all of it. M-maybe we just need to get his side of all this and we can finally figure everything out! Don’t you guys think so?”

The Gems all met the hopeful, encouraging grin their young ward was offering them, but none of them bothered to return it. Garnet’s expression remained tight and stoic as she looked back to the machine, Pearl’s eyes wide and full of dread and fear as she continued glancing around the lab, and Amethyst bitterly glared down, hugging herself tightly as a sign of how hurt by the lies Stan had told her for so long she really was. Steven took pause at this, his smile faltering as he began to wonder exactly how all of this connected back to his guardians, given their apparent unknown involvement in it. However, this stilted, uncertain silence wasn’t interupted by the young Gem’s pressing questions, but rather by Dipper as he happened to make what was by far the most startling discovery yet.

“I-I can’t believe it…” he whispered, completely shocked as he saw the two unquestionably familiar books laying on the desk right in front of them. “It’s impossible… The other two journals?!”

“What?!” the others all asked in unified surprise as they also took notice of journals 1 and 2, both of which had been unanimously thought to be lost. After all, Gideon had formerly had possession of the second one, but the general assumption had been that it had been confiscated from the child psychic at his arrest. The first one, however, had always been a mystery, its location and any proof of its mere existence always unknown until now. And yet, as Dipper pulled journal 3 out, here they were, all three journals, finally united in the least likely of places.

“All this time…” Dipper muttered, though his volume quickly grew along with his rapidly rising anger. “All this time, Stan had them!? I can’t believe it! He said he didn’t want us looking into all this supernatural stuff, but then he ends up having the other two journals, and this huge machine, and this deep, mysterious past!” As a show of his severe infuriation, he kicked the nearby desk, not even really feeling the rattle of pain through his leg as it connected with the hard metal amidst his betrayed rage. “Was that just to throw us off his trail?! Was anything he said to us even real?! Why would he have those journals!?”

“Dipper, please, calm down!” Steven urged, aptly concerned. “M-maybe the reason why Mr. Pines didn’t tell any of us about the journals is because he was waiting for the right time!”

“Yeah, or maybe he’s the author,” Soos suggested just as amicably.

However, as outright angry as he was over this revelation, Dipper was having none of it. “Or maybe he stole them from the author! Maybe the reason he has all those fake IDs is because he is a master criminal, and this machine is his master plan!”

“Augh! No, he’s not!” Amethyst protested fiercely. “We don’t even know what this machine does, much less why he has it or those dumb old journals!”

“That’s exactly it, Amethyst,” Garnet said tightly. “We don’t know about any of this. Stan never told anyone about any of it, not even you. He kept all of this so well-hidden for who knows how long now.”

“But one would have to wonder…” Pearl continued, a suspicious scowl crossing her features. “Why he would go to such great lengths to hide all of this in the first place?”

“I-I… I think this might be why…” Dipper said with a stunned gasp after having opened all three journals. He had arranged all of their connected center pages into what locked like the highly complicated blueprints to the very machine in front of them, and while that was alarming enough on its own, what the trio of books revealed as the blacklight was directed upon them was even more horrifying.

“I was wrong the whole time,” Dipper read from all three journals as everyone tensely crowded around them. ‘The machine was meant to create knowledge, but its too powerful. I was deceived and now it is too late. The device, if fully operational, could tear our universe apart! It must not fall into the wrong hands. If the clock ever reaches zero, our universe is doomed!”

A collective, fearful gasp rose up from the group upon hearing this, all of them taking in the journals’ dire warning at the exact same time. Clearly, whatever the machine before them actually did and what Stan or the Gems’ connection to it was, its purpose was a sinister one, meant to cause severe and absolute destruction on a very wide scale. And in everyone’s minds, the need to keep the universe safe and surviving far outweighed anything else, especially as they all looked up to the countdown timer right above them reading only one minute and thirty seconds.

“It’s the final countdown! Just like they always sung about!” Soos cried in apt terror.

“W-what do we do?!” Pearl exclaimed in sharp alarm. “How do we stop it?!”

“Like this!” Dipper pointed to another page of journal 1, which told of a manual override for shutting the machine off. “Come on! We have to shut it down!”

No one argued with this resolve as they all rushed into the massive room the machine itself was contained it. The swell of power emitting from it was becoming strong enough to result in miniature earthquakes, throwing the entire group off a bit, though that hardly deterred them from their incredibly essential mission.

“There! Quick!” Dipper exclaimed as he pointed out the override switches on the far side of the room. They were set up as a row of four keys, and as uncertain as they were in light of everything that was going on, Steven, Mabel, and Amethyst hung back from them as Dipper, Pearl, Garnet, and Soos readily ran up to them. The four of them turned the keys in exact unison, resulting in the machine’s overall switch to rise up from the ground in front of it in the form of a tall pole with a bright, glowing button resting on top of it. “That’s it! The shutdown switch!” Dipper shouted as everyone rushed over to it, knowing that they quite literally had not a second to waste. “This all stops… now!”

“DON’T TOUCH THAT BUTTON!” Everyone was quick to turn towards the door upon hearing this only to find none other than Stan himself standing there, breathless and alarmed at the sight of his nephew’s hand positioned directly over the switch that could very well end up ruining everything. For a moment, the room was filled with tense silence as the group looked to the conman none of them knew as well as they thought, their expressions mingled with distrust, anger, uncertainty, dread, and grief. Stan couldn’t help but feel somewhat guilty as he gaged all of these varying emotions, particularly those coming from his own niece and nephew, but even so, he knew there would be time to sort all of them out later. For now, the machine came first, no matter what. “Dipper, just back away,” Stan advised cautiously, taking a step forward. Dipper paid him no mind, keeping his hand poised above the switch as he sent his uncle a bitter glare, one that, at the very least, Garnet and Pearl shared as they shook their heads at the conman disapprovingly. “P-please,” Stan continued his appeal, his tone deeply earnest as he slowly approached the others. “Don’t press that shutdown button. You gotta trust me.”

“And I should trust you why?” Dipper asked caustically, only moving his hand away from the switch for a moment. “After you stole radioactive waste? After you lied to us all summer? I don’t even know who you are?!”

“Look, I know all this seems nuts,” Stan said as evenly as he could, though he couldn’t deny his nephew’s harsh words stung somewhat. “But I need that machine to stay on!”

“And why exactly would you need that?” Pearl asked quite crossly. “So you can sit back and laugh as the entire universe falls to complete and utter ruin thanks to your little doomsday device here!? A universe that Garnet, Amethyst, and I have dedicated our entire existences to protecting?! Oh but of course you wouldn’t care about that, now would you, Stan—if that is your real name—seeing as how you don’t care about anything, not even the wellbeing of our reality itself?!”

“W-what?” Stan asked, taken aback by such bold accusations. “No! You’ve got it all wrong! That’s not why—I’m not… T-that isn’t what I’m trying to do here, I promise. I just need a chance to explain, a-and you guys gotta believe me when I do! A-Amethyst!” The purple Gem flinched as he called her out, her expression incredibly hesitant as she finally made eye contact with him. “You’ll believe me, won’t you?”

Amethyst said nothing at first, especially as the others quickly glanced over at her, clearly putting her on the spot. The purple Gem shook her head as she gripped her arm, looking away from the conman uneasily as betrayed tears started to well up in her eyes. “S-Stan… I… I don’t-”

She was abruptly cut off by the sharp beep from Stan’s watch, eliciting a startled gasp from the conman as he knew what was coming. “O-oh no! Brace yourselves!” he warned just as another gravity anomaly began, by far the most powerful one yet.

In fact, this reversal was so strong that it was felt essentially all over town as the sun set over a landscape where almost nothing at all was properly tethered to the earth, almost as if it was a sign that the end was nigh. Yet the surge was by far the most powerful near the source of this anomaly itself: the machine. Stan, Dipper, Mabel, Soos, and Steven were all completely powerless to keep themselves down as they were lifted up freely into the air without any rhyme or direction at all. However, Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl managed to maintain their footing, their gems instantly adjusting to the shift in gravity around them as they watched the chaos unfurl above them.

As the machine’s computer announced that only 35 seconds remained, both Stan and Soos were pushed towards the far wall of the room while Dipper managed to land against a support beam and Steven found himself pressed against the side of the room. As he “landed”, the young Gem happened to notice a panel right next to him, one that bore his own, or rather, his mother’s gemstone upon it, with a large hallow right below it with the pattern of his shield imprinted on it. Despite everything else that was going on around him, Steven took pause upon seeing this, his eyes widening as he realized, beyond any shadow of a doubt that his mother, that his guardians even, had been involved with this machine at some point. But exactly what that involvement meant at such an intense, decisive moment like this, the young Gem had no idea.

Meanwhile on the ground, Garnet and Pearl both gasped as they looked back to the shutdown switch, which was still right in front of them. The pair nodded with firm resolve, before the Gem leader stepped forward, raising her hand to turn it off once and for all. “It’s time to end this,” she said brazenly, however, before she could slam her hand down on the switch, it was halted in the most unexpected of ways.

“Stop!” Amethyst shouted, throwing herself between Garnet and the switch and holding her arms out wide.

“Amethyst, what in the world are you doing?!” Pearl exclaimed in utter disbelief. “Let us get to that switch!”

“I-I…” the purple Gem hesitated, glancing back to the switch and then up to Stan as he continued wildly sailing through the air above. She took in a sharp breath as she pushed her pressing tears away, her hands in tight fists as she glared up at her two teammates fiercely. “N-no! I won’t! Yeah, I don’t understand any of this, and I really don’t understand why Stan never bothered to even tell me about it, b-but I know him and I know he’d never try to just… destroy the universe like some kind of crazy supervillain! He was always there for me, even when you guys and Rose weren’t! He’s like… o-one of the only people I can actually be real with, a-and even if he wasn’t real with me about all this, I still want to trust him!”

Upon hearing this, Stan glanced over in Amethyst’s direction, his eyes wide as they met the purple Gems’. While her expression conveyed plenty of grief and anger, she still offered him a small nod of confirmation, showing that she meant what she said and that she was willing to stand against even her own teammates to prove it. And while the conman wanted to give her all of the thanks and gratitude he could for this show of loyalty, he didn’t get the chance as Garnet stepped closer to Amethyst, her imposing form towering over the smaller Gem as she spoke rigidly.

“Amethyst, move, now.”

The purple Gem shook her head slowly, her glare returning as the gemstone on her chest as she realized she had just crossed the point of no return. Still she hardly cared; she had made her choice, and even if it was one largely based off emotions and little else, she was going to follow it, no matter what the consequences might be. “Make me!” she growled, pulling her whip out and lashing it out wide enough to entangle both of them before tossing them against the far wall hard. And as confused as Garnet and Pearl were by this, Amethyst rushed forward all the same, ready to do whatever she had to to keep them away from that switch in what little time was left.

As the Gems were lost amidst their on conflict on the ground, up in the air, things were still in absolute upheaval. However, as he tried to regain some semblance of direction, Dipper happened to notice that, only a few feet above the switch, Mabel had gotten herself tangled by the ankle by a stay chord, conveniently enough putting her in the radius of the switch in place of the Gems being displaced from it. “Mabel!” he shouted over to her as she looked to him amidst trying to untangle herself, clearly alarmed. “Hurry! Shut it down!”

While still rather lost amidst everything going on at once, Mabel nodded, doing as her brother had instructed as she crawled along the wire down to the switch itself. “Huh?” Amethyst glanced over her shoulder with a gasp just as Garnet and Pearl were picking themselves up off the ground. “W-wait! No! Mabel, don’t!”

“Y-yeah, stop!” Stan shouted from his place in the air. “Please, Mabel, you gotta-” The conman was cut off as Soos suddenly barreled into him, pushing him back even further to keep him from reaching the switch. “Augh! Soos! What are you doing?!” Stan growled as he struggled against his rebellious handyman. “I gave you an order!”

“Sorry, Mr. Pines—if that is your real name,” Soos apologized as he continued shoving Stan back. “But I have a new mission now! Protecting these kids!”

“Soos, you idiot! Let me go!” Stan yelled, though his struggle was made even more difficult as Dipper launched himself off the wall towards him and joined Soos in restraining him. At the same time, Amethyst turned back towards Garnet and Pearl as they stood, both of them looking to their teammate in staunch disapproval. Even so, the purple Gem kept a firm hold on her whip, returning their glare as she steeled her resolve to stand against them, no matter what.

“Amethyst, this is ridiculous!” Pearl huffed hotly, though she still didn’t summon her weapon. “You saw what the journals said: that machine could destroy the entire universe if we don’t stop it! Your friendship with Stan doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as keeping the planet safe!”

“W-what the heck do those dumb journals even know!?” Amethyst protested harshly. “Our gems are on that machine! If that’s not proof we had something to do with it, then I don’t know what is! So why would we wanna shut it down if its something we were apart of!?”

“Because it’s a mistake,” Garnet said coldly. “A mistake that should have never been allowed to get this far.”

“A mistake?” Amethyst growled, shapeshifting into her much larger Purple Puma form so she could take them both on at once. “You mean like me?!”

In her torn anger, the purple Gem attacked, launching herself at Garnet and Pearl in an attempt to pin them to the wall. The Gem leader was the first to summon her weapon, sending a brutal punch Amethyst’s way, though as furious and passionate as she was, it wasn’t enough to knock her away. Pearl nearly summoned her spear as well, though she stopped short upon noticing journal 3 lying on the ground right at her feet. The white Gem gasped as she managed to tuck out from underneath Amethyst’s hold, though she wasn’t able to fully break past her as she narrowly grabbed the journal, frantically flipping through it for any other options. Fortunately she quickly found exactly was looking for in the form of a page detailing a backup override switch, one that, based on her quick reading of the page, could only be activated by a certain magical shield that had once belonged to a certain pink Gem. Or rather, a shield that now belonged to said Gem’s son.

“S-Steven…” Pearl whispered, her eyes wide as she looked up amidst Garnet attempting to push Amethyst back. The white Gem was quick to find Steven, still stuck against the side wall as he anxiously watched the ongoing midair struggle between Stan, Soos, and Dipper. And, conveniently enough, he was positioned right next to the shield switch the journal detailed. “Steven!” Pearl shouted to him, still trying to break beyond Amethyst’s steadfast hold. “On the wall next to you is another shutdown switch! Use your shield and turn it off, now!”

“W-what?!” Steven asked over the growing din coming from the charging machine behind him.

“Shut it off, Steven!” Garnet ordered fiercely, landing another blow against her indignant, rebellious teammate.

“Wha—S-Steven, no!” Amethyst cried, looking to the young Gem desperately. “Don’t do it!”

“I-I… I don’t-” Steven attempted to protest, absolutely torn between the intense conflict between his guardians. However, Stan was quick to cut him off upon realizing exactly what position the young Gem was in.

“K-kid!” he yelled over Soos and Dipper pushing him away. “Listen to Amethyst! Do not throw that shield of yours into that switch!”

“Steven!” Dipper shouted down to the young Gem. “Listen to Garnet and Pearl and turn that thing off!”

“B-but… but I…” Steven trailed off, clearly afraid and distraught as he looked back to the machine, only mere seconds away from activating at this point. The young Gem knew that no matter what choice he ended up making, no one would be left happy from it, whether he left it alone as Stan and Amethyst hoped he would, or he followed Garnet, Pearl, and Dipper’s orders to knock his shield into the switch. In fact, he was so torn that he couldn’t even think of so much as summoning his shield as he instead stared at the switch, as if it had the conclusion that he would ultimately have to reach for himself.

“Oh for crying out loud!” Dipper groaned in severe aggravation upon noticing Steven’s clear hesitance at the exact wrong time. Fortunately though, he wasn’t their only option. “Mabel! Press the red button! Shut it down!”

“No, you can’t!” Stan protested, pushing his nephew away as he looked to his niece pleadingly. “You gotta trust me!”

For a moment, Mabel was silent as she looked between her brother and her uncle, both of them fighting against each other as she found herself metaphorically caught in between. Clinging onto the switch as she was, the button was right within her reach; it would be so incredibly easy to just reach out and press it. And yet… as much as she knew she should press it, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. At least not yet. “G-Grunkle Stan…” she let out a small, choking sob, one that showed every bit of confusion and heartache she had been holding in for the past several hours. Her tears were unrestrained by gravity as they floated up, the brightness of the machine behind them making them almost glow as they rose into the open air. “I-I don’t even know i-if you’re my grunkle!”

Stan let out a small, ashamed sigh at this, hating that the kids had found out about all of this in such a way, hating that he had lied to them for so long about it all in the first place, and mostly hating himself for putting them in such a terrible, terrible spot at all. “Then listen to me,” he began, his tone firm yet clearly remorseful. “Remember this morning when I said I wanted to tell you guys something?”

Before the conman had a chance to elaborate any further a sudden burst of energy pulsated from the machine, knocking just about everyone back, save for Mabel and Steven as they managed to hold onto their respective switches. Still, the Gems were thrown against the wall, with Amethyst still keeping Garnet and Pearl held back, while Stan, Soos, and Dipper landed high against the exact same way, the lack of gravity keeping them pressed tightly against it. Upon seeing the ferocity of the machine’s power, both Steven and Mabel were quick to react, with the former finally working up the nerve to summon his shield as the latter slowly, shakily raised her hand over the button.

“Steven, please!” Amethyst begged the young Gem as she watched him position his shield near the backup switch. “You just gotta listen to me and Stan on this one!”

“Yeah, kid, just hear me out!” Stan assured as he looked between both Steven and Mabel pleadingly. “This morning, I just wanted to say that you’re gonna hear some bad things about me, a-and some of them are true. But trust me. Everything I’ve ever worked for, everything I care about, its all for this family!”

“Your family?!” Pearl scoffed harshly at this claim, glaring up towards the conman. “You put your family, this town, the entire universe in danger with this… this doomsday machine, and you expect anyone to believe an appeal like that!”

“Exactly!” Dipper readily, angrily agreed. “Mabel, Steven, what if he’s lying?! That thing could destroy the universe! Listen to your heads!”

“look into my eyes, both of you!” Stan said, far less incensed than the others as he glanced between the conflicted pair. “Do either of you really think I’m a bad guy?”

Mabel and Steven both froze as they did just that, both of them making eye contact with the conman and seeing not anger or vengeance in his eyes, but rather desperation, vulnerability, and sadness. Sadness was among the chief of these, a type of inner grief and guilt that seemed to be decades old and carried some kind of story behind it, though what story that was, neither one of them knew. Still, it was all nothing less than completely genuine, especially as they noticed, for perhaps one of the first times to their knowledge, desperate, pleading tears start to well up in the conman’s eyes. Tears that were enough to at the very least, convince Steven to go with his gut instinct rather than the command of two out of three of his guardians. No matter where that instinct might lead.

“N-no…” the young Gem whispered, his eyes wide as he kept them on Stan rather than even glancing over to his guardians as his shield dissipated into thin air. “No, I don’t…”

“Steven, you can’t be serious!” Dipper snapped hotly at such a foolish decision. “He’s lying! Why can’t you see that?!”

“Honestly, Steven! You’re being just as outrageous as Amethyst about this!” Pearl exclaimed, making her disapproval quite clear though even so, Steven didn’t retract it. In fact, he didn’t say much of anything at all as he looked back to the switch, at his own mother’s insignia resting upon it, and choosing, just this once, to go with what he felt was right. Not what the Gems believed, not what his mother would have believed, but what he believed.

And as far as Steven was concerned, that was the absolute best he could do.

“There’s not much time left!” Garnet warned as the countdown clock began audibly counting down.

“10.”

“Mabel! You can still stop this!” Dipper implored his sister, hoping that she’d make the right choice where Steven hadn’t. “Shut it down, now!”

“9.”

“M-Mabel, please!” Stan begged, a few of his tears starting to fall down, or up, rather as he realized he could very well lose 30 years of tireless work in a single, sorrowful instance.

“8.”

“Hit the button, Mabel!” Pearl shouted to Mabel as her and Garnet pushed against Amethyst harder than ever.

“7.”

“D-don’t listen to them!” Amethyst yelled back, finding it harder and harder to keep her frantic teammates at bay.

“6.”

Mabel sucked in a tearful breath as she looked back to the button, knowing that everything now rested solely upon her shoulders. Once again, she looked over at Steven, who simply returned her distraught expression solemnly, not bothering to tell her what to do as he knew just as well as she did that this was her choice to make alone.

“5.”

And so instead, she glanced back up at her brother. His hands were in tight fists and his expression was intense and hostile as the current from the machine blew his bands up just a bit to reveal his birthmark. Overall, his entire manner adamant and angry as he nodded with the silent command to hit the switch. She understood well just how betrayed and infuriated Dipper was likely feeling; after all, she felt quite betrayed herself. Yet as she looked back to Stan, she found that she couldn’t share her brother’s anger, no matter how hard she tried. Because regardless of his darkened past or his menacing machine, this was still Stan. This was still the conman who flashed tourists goofy, winning smiles and won just about everyone over with his charm and wit. This was still her uncle, who rustled her hair and laughed at her jokes and encouraged her silliness and creativity. This was still Stan, who gave her some of the warmest, most affectionate hugs she had ever known, who still beamed at her with pride of her accomplishments, who comforted her and did everything he could to make her tears stop whenever they showed up. This was still her uncle, and he still loved her.

“4.”

And if there was nothing else that Mabel knew at such a stark, intense, impossible moment such as this, it was that, and that alone.

“G-Grunkle Stan…” she began, looking to him with tearful eyes before lifting her hands away from the switch entirely, making her choice as she floated up into the open air before the machine in complete acceptance of it.

“3.”

“I trust you…”

“2.”

“Mabel! Are you crazy!?” Dipper shouted fiercely, unable to believe that Mabel would, after everything that had happened and everything they had seen, still decide to side with the lying, duplicitous conman, of all people. “We’re all gonna-”

“1.”

“No!” Garnet and Pearl shouted in unison, finally breaking past Amethyst as they rushed forward, leaving their teammate fallen, exhausted and unable to do anything else to keep them back. However, there was no time left for them to reach the switch as the counter finally hit zero.

And then, all at once, everything exploded.

Before anyone could even think, a blinding, incredibly powerful light ripped forth from the machine, one that filled not just the basement, not just the shack, but Gravity Falls entirely. Those in the room themselves only had time to let out fearful screams as they were swallowed up by this light, tossed about by its intensity to the point that none of them were even aware of what came next.

In the span of what seemed like ages, the entire world seemed to be consumed by white nothingness, with everyone hanging adrift in its sway. Still, somewhere amidst it all, a treasured photograph shattered, kids, Gems, a handyman, and a conman all floated about freely, and a machine—or rather, the very fabric of reality ripped itself apart. And yet, reality was not so easily strewn to pieces. For as quickly as it had erupted into chaos, it wove itself right back together again, leaving only minor rips and tears in its wake as everything at last came to a standstill.

Gravity resumed its place in nature, dropping everything roughly back into their proper places. Within the shack’s basement, however, everything had been completely undone. The machine had torn itself to pieces of nothing more than battered metal and broken wires, though it was somehow still operational as its center glowed in an eerie blue light. In the aftermath of the chaos they had all just been consumed by, it took everyone a second to reacclimate themselves, but when they did, it was still something of a struggle to pick themselves up off the floor to see what was happening before them.

For within the light of the machine itself, the silhouette of a single figure soon appeared, one that steadily approached it until it finally emerged. He was consumed by the shadows of the room as well as his own heavy, dark, tattered attire, which included a mask, hood, and scarf, all of which concealed his identity completely. The entire room was held in a tentative silence as they watched this mysterious stranger walk forward, not saying anything to anyone as he walked up to the fallen journal 1. As he reached out to pick it up, he first paused, placing a six-fingered hand against the one on the book’s cover before claiming it and slipping it into the pocket of his long overcoat. The Gems shared a soft gasp as they watched it, gaining the first inclinations as to who exactly this mystery person was, but even so, everyone else was largely lost as the looked to him in apt confusion as he prepared to remove his face coverings.

“W-what…?” Dipper whispered, almost too afraid to break the ongoing silence amidst his own disbelief. “W-who… who is that…?”

“The author of the journals…” Stan answered just as starkly, his eyes wide as the figure finally unveiled his face, revealing something none of them had been expecting. He was rather old, roughly in his late 60’s or so though he hardly looked it based on his relative lack of wrinkles and rough, rugged 5 o’clock shadow. His hair was greyed and somewhat unkempt, with a lighter streak of silver near his ears and long sideburns framing his face. He wore a pair of worn glasses with a crack in one of the frames and his expression was serious, almost gravely so, though even beyond that one thing was alarmingly clear:

He was almost identical to Stan.

Which of course, the conman gave as brief an explanation for as any as he confirmed exactly who the mysterious, long-elusive author really was. “My brother…”

To be continued…

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